On the 22nd of October, it was announced that AEGEE-Europe is going to the east and a new contact in Tyumen has been founded. Being located in Siberia, 1,700 kilometers east of Moscow, this new contact is currently the most eastern outpost of AEGEE, although there had been the more eastern located contacts Tomsk and Vladivostok in the past. These contacts, however, never signed the Convention d’Adhésion, so let’s hope Tyumen will! The AEGEEan spoke to Marina Ulybysheva to find out more about this new contact!
Asked how she first found out about AEGEE-Europe, Marina tells us: “Unfortunately I didn’t know about it when I was a student, dreaming of travelling abroad and having a lot of friends all over the world. I got to know of AEGEE-Europe last year, just before the deadline for application for Summer Universities. A friend of mine told me about it and honestly she just forced me to become a member and to apply for some projects. Now of course I am really happy that I did it! I have already got a lot of friends and was in the amazing SU (St. James’ Way) organized by AEGEE-León”.
Having this great first experience, Marina decided to go home and create something in her own city, Tyumen. “I met with the friend who told me about AEGEE-Europe and we realized that we wanted to have an AEGEE antenna in our city too, but we didn’t have any idea what and how we could do it, what kind of projects we could organize here and whether we really could be responsible for a group of foreigners in our city. This year I understood that I really have a project that could be interesting and I found supporters. So it happened!”.
With around fifteen people involved, of which most are Marina’s own friends, the contact already has some plans. “First of all, we want to become a Contact Antenna and then Antenna of course! I want to organize a SU here too”, Marina tells us. In order to set up projects, volunteers are of course needed, so Marina is negotiating with all universities in Tyumen to have a presentation about AEGEE there, while in the meantime, sharing information about AEGEE and its advantages with anyone she meets.
Luckily, there is already enough support from the Network. “I have never got so many support messages and congratulations from people I don’t know. It is an amazing feeling! As for real help I can say ‘thank you’ to AEGEE-Moskva, AEGEE-Sankt-Peterburg and AEGEE-Voronezh. I hope this is just the beginning!”.
Written by Svenja van der Tol, AEGEE-Nijmegen