AEGEE-Europe Projects' Newsletter

During last two months the members of the Eastern Partnership Project provided quite an intensive, but productive work. There was a row of successful project's events - Eastern Partnership Action Days in Prague, Poznan and Groningen. All the events gathered a lot of people, brought new ideas and interactive discussion.

In April we received surprisingly pleasant news about getting the Youth in Action grant to organise the Conflict Resolution conference in Oviedo this September therefor an active work is going on now on preparing this project.

At the beginning of May project team gathered during the Spring Agora Enschede. The most outstanding event was the signing of the contract with AEGEE-Europe. Besides, we presented the project during the AEGEE and study fairs, getting interested in the Eastern Partnership topics more and more new young activists. There was also a team meeting that gathered a big part of project's members, where many issues were discussed as well as new members were welcomed. This spring EaP Project team got its new FR Man-ager - Elena Toader (AEGEE-Passau), founded a PR subcommittee and attracted new enthu-siastic young people into project's pillars.

Despite the fact that many people consider the summer to be a time of vacations, a lot of work is expecting for the EaP team. We are preparing thematic content for two Summer Universities - SU AEGEE-Yerevan and SU-AEGEE-Katowice & AEGEE-Dnipropetro-vsk. Apart from that - work on the grant applications, preparing Mobility Action Days in Tbilisi and Chisinau, working on the conference on Non Formal Education in Kyiv and plan-ning the further concept and activities forming for the second part of 2012.

AEGEE Fair at Agora EnschedeThe EDL project had a stand at the AEGEE Fair in Enschede. We asked people about their local activities during the previous EDL in November and encouraged them to hold events next year. We also had a language quiz, which was very popular. Many people took part in the quiz, which was won in the end by Natalia Bochenek from AEGEE-Wien.

Workshop at Agora Enschede Forty-six language lovers joined our workshop “Do you speak international? Multilingualism and language learning in Europe” at the Agora in Enschede. In the first part of the workshop we gave some official statistics about multilingualism in Europe according to the Eurobarometer surveys. We compared their language knowledge with the statistics for Europe in general. It clearly showed the participants of our workshop knew more languages than the average European. All participants could speak at least one foreign language in addition to their mother tongue (in Europe 56%); 80% mastered at least two foreign languages (in Europe 28%) and 46% was able to hold conversation at least in three foreign languages (in Europe 11%). Also we discussed the best age when children should start learning foreign languages. Al-though only 7 out of 46 participants started to learn foreign language(s) at kindergarten or earlier, most of them agreed that language learning should start at this early age. In the second part the participants were split into groups. Each group was given a statement that was to be discussed within the group and the results were presented in public. Diverse points of view, numerous facts from personal life and opinions on the situation in their own or other countries were shared and discussed, which led to a successful exchange of experiences. Unfortunately, we were quite short in time to discuss all the points. In the end we also gave the information about the EDL team of AEGEE and invited all interested people to join us and/or organize activities related to languages within their own locals. We hope our participants learned many interesting things about languages in Europe and became even more concerned in this topic.

Upcoming activities During summer, AEGEE-Skopje will hold a Summer University with multilingualism as main theme. The EDL team will visit the SU and organise several sessions in the programme, in addition to a wide range of introductory language courses organised by the participants. After summer, the campaign for the European Day of Languages 2012 will start. As usually in AEGEE, the day will take place at the end of November. In September we plan to have a new website that provides as much information as possible to assist local organisers with their EDL events. Together with the World Esperanto Youth Organisation (TEJO), the EDL team of AEGEE is preparing a seminar on European language policy in March 2013. We submitted a grant application to the European Youth Foundation and hope to receive the results very soon, so we can go ahead with the preparations.

April and May were totally full for all the member of our team. Not because of exams or travels but because of a lot of work.

On 18th of April there were two sessions in Debrecen, organized from AEGEE-Debresen concerning the non-formal education (NFE) - ”The role of active participation in youth organisations - gain-ing practical skills – NFE” & ”The issue of NFE on European level - YFJ projects (Where Are You(th) Going)”. The main objective was to raise awareness on the importance of Non-Formal Education, Volun- teering and active participation in youth organizations. Concern- ing the fact that AEGEE, as an organization and opportunities is not really known in Debrecen, the event also aimed to provide the participants with a better understanding and the benefits of youth organizations. There-fore European level involvement and active Citizenship were also explained. The coopera- tion between different youth NGOs (AEGEE, ESN, AIESEC) and a joined event succeeded in getting more support from the University and had a significant “The event was a huge success: full media coverage was arranged by the Student Union (the main sponsor), besides the workshops, the participants could also take part in interactive games, ask for help at info desks, learn about national stereotypes and attend concerts later and hard work and tons”, said one of the main organisers Réka Salamon.

The next deadline in our program was 1st of May. We submitted two YiA applications concerning the recognition of NFE from the Business, Educational Institutions and Policy makers. Unfortunately due to miss-ing original forms of 6 of the 26th partners for the application in Sofia, it was even not evaluated. So we hope that in September it will be different. Still crossing fingers for the Alicante application.

And here it is, May came... On 15th of May there was an event organized concerning important issues of the higher education in the Netherlands. The organizers were AEGEE-Leiden and several other local NGOs. The main 2 sessions were about the following topics: 'The long-studying fine is just' & 'Cutting on Higher Education is short-sighted'. In the event took part a Member of Parliament and due to the fact that she is the only one defend-ing the long-studying fine the discussions were pretty sharp. From a long time in the Netherlands there are a lot of debates round tables and event protests for the reform of study finances and the so called 'fine'. And coming on one table with decisions makers is probably at least a little step for one common understanding of both sides. From 20th till 28th of May was “Getting employed – the non-formal way”, the youth exchange aiming to enable young people coming from many different countries to explore different kinds of voluntary work, with special emphasis on the importance of social conscience, active citizenship and non-formal skills help-ing both one's personal and professional growth and employment prospects, thus encouraging young people to get involved in a voluntary project in their local community. The event was awesome thanks to all the participants and the great organizers from AEGEE-Lyon!

At the end of the month, on 27th of May there was a workshop-discussion related to the Bologna implementation and the perspectives and developments in Russia. The session was part of the Regional Training Course of AEGEE-Moskva. The main topics of the discussion were the recognition of qualifications, the mobility, the quality assurance, Lifelong Learning, the European higher education in a global context, the internal interests of Russia related to the Bologna process and etc.

May was a very intense month for the Where Does Europe End? project – we’ve spent it preparing for, enjoying and reflecting upon our final event which took place in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Together with an amazing team of organizers from AEGEE-Utrecht as well as a group of wonderful participants from different corners of the continent, we focused our ef-forts on trying to address issues recognized by us as the most important challenges Europe is facing today – rising nationalism, illegal immigration, economic crisis and enlargement of the EU. Through our meetings with speakers and group work, we discovered many ways in which these issues intervene with one another, and together shape the future of European Identity. We have not found a clear-cut, final answer to the question “Where Does Europe End?”, but that was never really the purpose.

The purpose of the project was to reflect about different perceptions of Europe, its shape and identity, and we’ve successfully completed this objective. We’ve also inspired many people to challenge their perceptions of Europe, and gathered many viewpoints on what constitutes Europe, what being “European” means and what are possible paths for the future of the old continent. Our final effort will be to put all the inputs we have gathered together and create a final booklet for this project, to transmit our ideas to all involved parties. This will be our main involvement for the months to come. Stay tuned for the results!

Sunny days finally have arrived and brought a lot of news for our beloved project! First of all, our strong point, Employment Action Day reached its end for 2012: the team is going to evaluate this period of workshops and lectures which aimed at raising awareness of the public on different areas concerning employment and employability; we will get back to you soon for the results. Moreover, working in collaboration with AEGEE-Santander, we have been able to send the Youth in Action programme application to Spanish NA, to fund the next ESE 2012 San-tander: please, cross your fingers for us too! This year we chose to focus the training a bit more on sustainable businesses. Stay tuned! ;)

From 20th to 26th of May, the exchange "Getting employed – the non formal way", took place in Lyon; with participants from Georgia, Albania, France, Bulgaria. The project, financed by Youth in Action programme, aimed at exploring different kinds of voluntary work. In addition, we welcome with pleasure a new external partnership: initiated by experienced trainers and coachers, we have been invited to be partner of the training The Arc, which will take place in Las Palmas in August.

Last but not least, the project represented by Florence, attended YO!Fest 2012|Intern Action Day and the Youth Intergroup Roundtable on Internships at European Parliament on 16th May. We did not miss this opportunity! We strongly encourage you to read the Charter here and spread it around you: to make the internship a really valuable learning experience and not a modern type of exploitation.

Suggestions, questions regarding the project? Contact us!For further updates please visit our website www.aegee.org/yue