Only a few days after coming back from the EBM, I already look back at the intense months of preparation before the event. Since December 2012, CD members Miguel Gallardo and Lucille Rieux, together with Sandra Oborska and me Lucia Sobekova -the content team managers-, have been working hard to develop the concept of the EBM Valletta 2013. Indeed, EBM Valletta is only the second EBM organised as a thematic conference meant to provide the participants with a strong thematic input.
Even if it is only a couple of days since the event has ended, I can already tell you how satisfying it has been to see so many people actively discussing during the different sessions. Either together with the experts we had invited or among themselves in corridors and during the coffee breaks...
This year the EBM organisers, the CD and content team decided to focus the EBM around the topic “The future of Europe”. Our objective was to have the members to discuss and address some of the current challenges Europe is facing. We have focussed on two aspects of the future of Europe.
First, we have discussed the current crisis and how it affects young people, as well as what could be solutions taken to improve this situation. The second day we focused on European identity from a bottom-up approach. We scrutinised what gives shape to something abstract like the identity, and which values contribute to define European identity and the feeling of belonging to Europe. This year, we tried a new system: not only the participants were attending the panel discussions and getting input from our guests, but afterwards they were asked to work in small groups in order to propose recommendations and innovative solutions to the problems we had been discussing. Those recommendations are a concrete outcome of the EBM, and will be surely presented during the Agora, to be used by the Comité Directeur and the Policy Officers in order to represent our opinion towards decision-makers.
The second part of the event has been focused on drafting the new Action Agenda from 2013-2014. Once again, it has been such a pleasant surprise to see how many participants decided to get involved in shaping the Strategic Planning documents of our organisation.
The ‘EBM Inspire’ was another new addition to this year’s EBM. Four brave members hit the floor and shared inspirational stories with the EBM participants. A great success which we will repeat at the Agora in Mannheim, and I invite you all to share your story. I am sure that we all have something to say!
I am glad that I was a part of the organising team of EBM-Valletta and I believe this event was a great step toward a more thematic and content-focused AEGEE. We do care about our future and we do care about Europe. We need to state our opinion as youth and AEGEEans clearly, regarding the Europe we want for tomorrow. We want to continue going in this direction, to keep making sure that this EBM gathers members who want to share their opinion and draft the vision of our organisation.
Written by thematic team of EBM Valletta: Lucia Sobekova, Lucille Rieux and Miguel Gallardo Albajar.
Photos in courtesy of Luke Pace, Mariella Rapa and Gunnar Erth.