Dear AEGEEans,



Your Rainbow-Team prepared an online-course about AEGEE for you :)



Maybe you participated to a Summer University or another event and now you are motivated to become active in AEGEE? Or you simply want to know more about it ?



Well, then you have 2 possibilities: you can go to an European School or a Training Course or simply follow our online-course, consisting of mini-lessons.

During the next months you will receive, directly in your inboxes, several lessons about the history, structure, bodies and events of AEGEE.



I would like to invite the local boards to forward this lessons to their local mailing lists- I’m sure you have some members interested in it who are not subscribed to Rainbow-L.

So, here we go with the first lesson:



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1st lesson : SHORT HISTORY AND BASICS OF AEGEE

Did you ever ask yourself how AEGEE was born?



A) Maybe out of a communication process between various student associations?



B) Or out of a conference?



Well, answer B is right!

Once upon a time, when most of you were still babies or going to kindergarten, there was a man called Franck Biancheri who organized a huge conference called “EGEE” (the name was related to the Aegean Sea where democracy was created 2,000 years ago), aiming at overcoming the paralysation of the European integration process.



This conference was held on 16th April 1985 in Paris, which is the official birthday of AEGEE. That’s the reason why the name of our association is french: Association des Etats Généraux des Etudiants de l'Europe .



Soon the first locals were established: in Paris, Munich, Milan, Leiden, London and Madrid. Just imagine,from 6 locals to the actual 260 in 20 years!  And what’s more important, now AEGEE is present all around Europe and it is a natural thing for us while in 1985 it was present only in western Europe and an expansion was impossible.

Now after this historical facts… WHY has AEGEE been established? Which were the aims?



Actually AEGEE wanted to be plat-form for young Europeans to discuss the future of Europe, to present their ideas to the officials of the EC institutions and national governments and to influence European policy in favour of students.



But what about the situation of AEGEE nowadays?

AEGEE managed to become one of the biggest interdisciplinary student associations in Europe; it is represented by 17.000 students, active in 260 cities, in 42 countries all around Europe – so let’s say that during 20 years AEGEE achieved a lot, thanks to the active members and their voluntary work.



Everyone who ever attended an event knows that AEGEE is a non-profit organization and that organizers do not receive any money for their work – that’s why AEGEE-events are so cheap and attractive for students.

Not for nothing a very important aim is the promotion of student mobility.



Other aims are the promotion of the idea of an unified Europe without any physical or mental borders – that’s why AEGEE doesn’t recognize any national level (like AEGEE-Italy) – and to foster cross-border cooperation, human rights, tolerance, european dimension of education and democracy.



To achieve those aims, AEGEE locals organize a lot of european events which act as a cultural exchange between young europeans: Summer Universities, Trainings. Projects, Conferences… to mention only some of them (I will explain the different kinds of events in another lesson)



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But after so much theory now it’s time for some practical things:



2nd lesson: HOW TO BE UP TO DATE TO WHAT IS GOING ON WITH AEGEE- THE MAILING LISTS AND THE WEBSITE



The mailing lists are important tools in order to exchange informations and to be up to date to new events, projects ecc.



Let’s start with the RAINBOW-LIST which is our regional mailing list (for Malta, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina) and to which you are probably subscribed to if you receive this email.

Apart from the Rainbow-L (our region is called ”Rainbow”) there are the mailing lists of the other 9 “AEGEE-Regions”: DACH, Balkania, Carpathian, Central, Spirit, North, North-West, South-West and Wiesen.

The regional MLs serve the purpose of cooperation and discussion for neighbouring antennae in neighbouring countries of a particular region.



The most important MLs are the AEGEE-L – which is the main discussion list, with any topic regarding AEGEE – and the AGORA-L where statutory-meeting matters are discussed.



If you are interested to know everything about events, you should subscribe to EVENT-L – here the new events are announced, with a link to apply to the event.



There are a lot of other mailing lists, for example every project and working group has its own one.  A lot of people are subscribed to AEGEE-SU-L, which is the one of the Summer Univeristies- very useful because free places in SUs are announced there. Of course this list is used during SU period.



Another important ML is BOARDINFORM-L on which practical informations for the board-members of an antenna are communicated – for example, right now before the Agora the treasurer of AEGEE-Europe explained how to pay the membership fees for the locals, how much the fee is ecc.



To subscribe to the mailing lists, just go to http://lists.aegee.org, where you can find the archives of all MLs.





Now let’s come to the website. As you might know, it’s www.aegee.org and there is really a lot of information about everything that concerns AEGEE – you should explore it on your own, it’s really worth it!



But I’ll give you some hints. First of all, you should create an aegee account- it’s very simple, just register with your name and the number on your membership card and you will get a password. You can explore the website without being logged in but you will have access to less information (for example you can see the evaluations of Summer Universities or the names and emails of the board-members of each local only if you are logged in).



Very useful is the page of the events where all events are listed, you can have a look at the past ones and add a new event if your local is organizing one. That’s also the page from where you can apply to the events.



If you want to know in which cities AEGEE is present, go to the link “network”.



Going to “office”, you can look at the Address Book which contains the names, e-mail addresses and phone numbers of the board-members of evey AEGEE-body. And you can find an incredible amount of any kind of material, ready to be downloaded (PR material, internal education material ecc) from the AEGEE-database.





That’s all for now, next lesson will hit your inboxes after the Agora.





Warm greetings from Firenze,

Anna





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Anna Karger
Vice-president & Secretary AEGEE-Firenze
http://www.aegeefirenze.it
Subcommissioner of the Rainbow Region
PR assistant Find Europe Coordination Team
http://www.aegee.uni-karlsruhe.de/fect/
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