Despite not being elected as the Flagship Project of AEGEE last year The Eastern Partnership (EaP) project stayed strong, extended their team and lobbied all over Europe. Still not sure which project you think did the best job in 2011? PR manager Daryna Skryl of the Eastern Partnership team tells you why they did.
Getting started
The AEGEE Eastern Partnership project started its development in January 2011. It was candidating for the Flagship Project at Spring Agora Alicante ‘11, but did not receive enough votes to get majority. Despite this fact, the project team members did not stop its activity and continued their work by extending the team. Furthermore, by not becoming a Flagship Project its popularity and amount of fans started to grow very fast! In July 2011 the first project development meeting took place in Yerevan, where there was developed further concept and plan of activities for the project.
Showing the rest of the Network what the EaP project is about
First acquaintance of AEGEE members with the project was during the Autumn Agora Skopje 2011, where we had a discussion workshop about the Eastern Partnership and quite an entertaining puzzle game at the Agora Fair. We also started special activities for the antennae – the Eastern Partnership Action Days. During autumn 2011 we organised three events – in Budapest, Passau and Tbilisi. The main aim of these events was to make young people aware of the problems their mates have in the Eastern Partnership countries. In total, the Action Days gathered in total approximately 250 participants in 2011. The project team is quite active and participates in various AEGEE meetings (LTCs, RTCs, NWMs, etc.) in order to inform people about our aims.
Traveling through Europe
What is really special is that apart from internal Network activities the Eastern Partnership project team members also participate in the external international events! Just to name a few of them: during 2011 we participated in the Youth Conference on the Polish Presidency (Warsaw), II Youth Convention on Volunteering (Brussels), EMI Civil Society Congress (Yerevan), Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum (Poznan), Salto-Youth Forum on Volunteering (Warsaw) and many others. In 2011 the Eastern Partnership Project was officially included into the EaP Civil Society Forum, which is at the moment the most important platform for changes in the partner countries. By active participation we long to make as many as possible contacts with future partners, funds and NGO representatives.
Continuing the great spirit from 2011
In general, the project’s aims will be achieved through external cooperation with the National Youth Councils, Embassies and Ministries of the Eastern Partnership countries, Civil Society Platforms and Think-tanks, groups of proactive young people and European Institutions.
A huge work was done during 2011 and even more is waiting for us in 2012. The project has very notable aims (i.e. lobbying for opening Erasmus for the partner countries), various amount of activities and sufficiently dynamic team, that make it not only the most ambitious project of the year 2011, but of the whole AEGEE-Europe history.
Written by Daryna Skryl, PR Manager AEGEE Eastern Partnership Project