Beyond Europe Concept Development Meeting

Finally it was Friday, me and Mario started to wait for the CDM participants, who were going to spend 2 intensive days in Brussels this weekend. We hoped they knew what was expecting them. Robin and Ivonne, other CD members who are one of the few people with me who is left in ‘ the Big Brothers house ‘ , used their experiences from the previous visitors visit, and started printing out information for the visitors about using the sink, the fridge and the general rules in the house, most importantly about our 4th character in the house, the mice:)

The participants started arriving. Having free time till the evening, most of them already left for Brussels to see the city, using their few leisure time to see Brussels. At 5 pm all of them were back, ready for the introduction round and the games. They all introduced themselves, and got a small introduction from the idea holders, and the facilitators, meanwhile getting to know each other better. After some games, Prisca delegated tasks for cooking schedules and sent the first group to shopping already for groceries for food. After cooking, everyone enjoyed a nice dinner with pasta, having an Italian in the house:)
After some more drinking and chatting, people started falling asleep.


The next day, we were all waken up by Julia and Iyad at 07.00. The first thing I remember was Fotis telling me ‘ I m in the line for bathroom ‘ while he was still sleeping. After a 4 star hotel quality breakfast, we left the house for our conference, a 2 minutes walking distance, used as a classroom regularly. We started the sessions, creating, brainstorming and presenting new ideas, sometimes with very hot discussions, which was cooled down by nice energizers. At the end of the day, all the room was full of papers with ideas, which we managed to summarize at the end of the day. After 7 hours of brainstorming and different methods, we have made a collage of the idea ‘ Beyond Europe ‘ with pictures. After the evaluation round, now everybody is at home, tired and waiting for dinner….

To be continued...

Cultural exchange and active citizenship

1. Cultural exchange: Dutch-Belgian-Italian cooking

There is one general rule when you live with an Italian: do not attempt to cook Italian food, because you will fail. Luckily our Italian is not that strict, still we generally don't want to take the risk and just stick to other cuisines.

However with Tena scared of the mice and also rather busy last night with filling out dozens of forms, I decided that the courgette risotto should nevertheless be prepared. Pennyless as we are from time to time, I only had money for some simple Belgian sausages to add. Ivonne was appointed as sous-chef, cutting the courgettes and preparing the salad.

Courgette risotto with Belgian sausages

Tomato mozarella salad

And to complete the intercultural experience: ketchup, a raspberry beer, and a lot of salt!

2. Active Citizenship: The PO Box

Where the European Parliament has its time consuming and rather senseless move to Strasbourg every month, AEGEE has its PO Box in Etterbeek. A CD many years ago decided it'd be cool to have a PO Box in the same area as the European Parliament, about 45 minutes to 1 hour traveling by trams and metro away from the Head Office. The poor Secretary General usually wastes half a day to pick up a few letters. Brussels bureaucracy...

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So today it became somehow my turn, and it was a nice and sunny day I thought why not to go by bike. It's a bit risky in Brussels with all the traffic and hills, but what the heck, better than a sweaty full tram. Now that after Percin, also Tena and Ivonne started to get active with their squash, I can of course not stay behind. The joy of peer pressure.

Forty five scary, life risking and exhausting minutes later, I arrive sweaty and tired at the Post Office. And damn it, I realise I forgot the key. Grrrrrrrr. I call Ivonne to complain, she laughs at me, and tells me to come home.

I decide to give it a try, as luckily we are after all in Belgium, and here they do not care that much about rules and procedures. A friendly face, a vague paper having something to do with our statutes, and 2 minutes later I am outside with the mail already. No ID, no key, piece of cake. Phew.

Back to the house, where I crash on our new sofa. Active Citizenship makes you tired.

Meanwhile in the Head Office...

Robin: "girls, tonight we're doing captain cleaning!"
Ivonne: "No!"
Tena: "No!"
Ivonne: "High five Tena, say no to the revolution!"

Robin walks into the kitchen, frustrated. "Then I'll do Captain Cleaning by myself!"

Tena to Robin: "please bring me a glass of water" (Tena avoids the kitchen, is scared of the mice)
Ivonne: "nooooooooo let her suffer!"
The girls go outside for a little smoking/cola break. Ivonne: "If I will do cleaning, it'll be my clothes. These are the last clean clothes I have!"

No hurry Ivonne. You look beautiful the way you are!

Yes, yes, total anarchy now that the President has left the office. His desk has already been taken over, territory marked with a piece of cheese.

Is this a secret plot to attract mice to his desk? Mice prevailing over the cats?! Never!!

I say YES to Captain Cleaning!

From the mouth of the Financial Director...

Ivonne:

"I don't want to think about money. It makes me cranky"


That explains a lot ;-)

Sparks of Future in the European Voice

Check out Sparks of Future, 10th Y Vote convention in Brussels and our EU-US forum on youth creativity, featured on the front page of the European Voice, the most esteemed EU affairs weekly.

Introducing Headoffice Lounge Area

It was Robin's idea already in August, that AEGEE Europe office should get a nice sitting area. But as we learned in our term - change is a tough thing :-) But it was again thanks to our miracle-maker Thijs Hjubers that the CD received 2 beautiful leather sofas (for which we are ashamed of course and beg Environmental Working Group and the Sustaining our Future to forgive us). Check out the AEGEE babes and the new furniture below ;-)

Results of Saturday 13th competition day

Ivonne kicked Tena's ass at squash.
Tena kicked everybody's ass at table soccer.
Ivonne's and Tena's asses hurt a lot. Squash is a good sport.
AEGEE-Enschede lost the orienteering competition: never got to Atomium nor to Havana.
Ana, Dragan, Tena and Vedran were despised and rejected at the philharmonia.
Wouter won the bottle breaking competition.
Theijs and Thijs won the couch carrying competition.
Ilona won both Fashion Police and THE Agency prizes (and the Spanish guy, Ivonne adds).

Today - cleaning and working day!

EDE & AEGEE-Tirane

On 5th June AEGEE celebrated together with whole Europe the European Day of Environment. Our flagship project, Sustaining our Future, was of course extremely active in that - you can read some nice stories about it on their blog.

Many locals contributed to the celebration with events, environmental actions, pic-nics, sun salutations, tree hugs etc :)

Newly reborn and apparently flourishing AEGEE-Tirane organised a whole conference (go to 7:20 to see them all together):



A second part was even attended by the Minister of Environment Lefter Xhuveli.

They definitely went a long way forward since I left them here.

Ah, network development satisfactions...

Hip hip hurray for AEGEE-Tirane!

Well done Erald for pushing everything forward, thanks Manos and Jehona for helping them so much.

Y Vote 2009 - Great Success!

Another report on the Y Vote 2009!

Voting for the first time

Y Vote 2009's Thijs de Wolff in the report made by the EuroparlTv on the Election Day in the Netherlands

Gonna be... a web developer?

AEGEE's new intranet will soon need new administrators and new developers. As new systems require new knowledge, the company that developed the new intranet is going to offer two series of trainings.

TRAINING NO 1.: 22-26 June, online

TRAINING NO 2.: 5-11 July (Nis, Serbia), free+partial travel reimbursement

Apply! --> http://tinyurl.com/q4ss9t

Sparks of Future @ EuroparlTV

European Commission in the house!

EACEA, the Executive Agency of the Youth in Action programme by the European Commission, came to the house today to talk about the UK Y Vote tour
(following massive office cleaning, of course).

We flooded them with stories, videos, pictures and PR material. They just left - somewhat puzzled, with booklets falling from their arms - recommending us to state all but all the outreach we had in terms of visibility, as they will need best practices to show for the next time they publish this special open call for funding, in 5 years. Oh yeah!

In the meantime, requests for opening new AEGEE groups in the UK won't stop coming in! After Swansea (which already sent in the first documents), Bath, Surrey, London and Durham, I just got some interest from Manchester.
UK Y Vote tour rocked! Well done team!


... and DON'T FORGET TO VOTE! ;-)

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