Getting the VFWG Back On Track

Why vote for the Visa Freedom Working Group (VFWG) to win the AEGEEan Choice Award 2012 rewarding the most efficient Working Group of 2011? When the VFWG was taking what seemed to be its last breath last year, Jana Pokorna (AEGEE-Istanbul/AEGEE-Praha) and the rest of the motivated VFWG members picked it up and put it back on its wheels.

The VFWG had to face the rough facts last year that they were, at the time of Agora Alicante, only fulfilling two out of the ten Working Group criteria. However, Projects Director Thomas Leszke believed in the fresh new board, elected just a week prior to the Agora, and the working group kept going, proving that they still had someone rooting for them.

Spreading information about the VFWG to the Network

Even though not being as visible as other Working Groups last year this does not mean that the VFWG was not working very hard. They were picking themselves up and improving the Working Group from the inside, creating a clear structure of the team and the group. The board that had been elected just before Agora Alicante had done a great job but despite this the Working Group had re-election just before Agora Skopje. They continued improving the PR of the Working Group, working hard on the design and especially on the content of their website. Furthermore, they launched a campaign providing as much as possible visa information for all locals, organising events or having representatives in events.

VFWG collaboration with the rest of the Network

Even though they still had to find their way and place in AEGEE the VFWG did make many things happen in 2011. Many projects started; some of them already finished, some of them are still ongoing and some were postponed. The list is long, but some of the activities include a workshop in the Agora Skopje about visa obstacles of young volunteers and “send a postcard to your embassy” project in cooperation with the Network Commission and Russian and Ukrainian antennae. The idea was for the SU participants to send a postcard from the country that they visited to the embassy in their country, a nice initiative but in the end unfortunately no postcards were sent.  However, they were also working on the info campaign, they attended events such as Agorae striving to be as visible as possible while offering plenty of info and help. As for the second part of the year the VFWG focused on providing information for the the Summer Universities booklet, and developed new projects. Since the Agora Skopje they have also been developing the internal structure in all aspects (IT, PR, HR, KT, task distribution, mailing lists etc.) with Guillermo García Tabarés, Human Resource Responsible in the Comite Directeur, and other Working Groups boards.

Hardworking Head Captain in Charge

So in the end what made the VFWG so special last year? Well, first of all they have one motivated and dedicated speaker in Jana Pokorna who is one of the active AEGEE members. She was the Agora Fair Manager at the Agora Skopje, she was content coordinator of the EBM Izmir and she has been the Speaker of the VFWG for almost a year. She describes it as her baby and says “The whole VFWG is special and will be forever, the more I am here, the more I wanna do” about it. However, Jana was not the only one improving the VFWG last year. Together the whole team went back on track faster than one could have wished for ending the year with fulfilling nine of ten WG criteria at the Agora Skopje. They revived the WG and they also helped getting the WG reform approved by the Agora Skopje which improved the system of WGs in AEGEE and which is something that the VFWG keeps working on in 2012.

Written by Patricia Anthony, AEGEE-København