Agora Reform Task Force: the Future Rules About Elections in Every Agora

by  on  in Agora

Svenja Van Der Tol is the Secretary General of AEGEE-Europe and also one of the most experienced journalists of our magazine. In this article, she will tell us about the new proposals which tend to innovate the rules about the elections for AEGEE European bodies. But the work is not finished yet and a big group is involved in this activity.

 

The Agora Reform is a task force that used to be active once and nowadays, the current Comité Directeur decided to establish it again after several Progress Meetings on the matter, during the previous Agora. At the moment, the A-team, as they call the task force, is working on different topics. The members (or superheroes, as they are usually called by Svenja) are: Erika Bettin (AEGEE-Verona), Loes Rutten (AEGEE-Utrecht), Lucas Zoetmulder (AEGEE-Delft), Kristóf Papp (AEGEE-Budapest), Philipp Blum (AEGEE-Aachen), Lia Tuska (AEGEE-Kastoria), Joris Veenhuis (AEGEE-Maastricht), Lucia Gavulova (AEGEE-Bratislava), Damien Latacz (AEGEE-Aachen), Elena Panagopoulou (AEGEE-Athina), Maarten de Groot (AEGEE-Amsterdam), Tom Simons (AEGEE-Enschede) and Antonis Triantafyllakissecond pic (AEGEE-Heraklio).

Although the Agora attracts thousands of members and many consider it to be among the highlights in their AEGEE time, the event is not perfect (yet). Therefore, opinions from different members have been gathered in Progress and Network Meetings, in order for the task force to continue to work for the implementation of new and fresh ideas. Topics they work on can be anything: from the preparation of delegates to the candidatures or even the actual ways to save valuable time during the plenaries, this team tries to do it all in order to make the Agora the best event it can be. Some of the smallest ideas will already go into practice during the Agora Bergamo, like the option to add a picture to one’s candidature. The rest, will be presented as proposals to be voted upon by the whole Network or discussed in the Progress Meetings. Agora Bergamo will be the first one where some solutions will be proposed, but third picthe process of reforming should not be stopped there!

To make the work of the task force more structured, it was split up into three subgroups. The “saving time” group has had several meetings, resulting in a list of suggestions for the Chair Team to keep in mind. Besides that, the group has worked on ideas regarding the agenda setting and keeping, as well as the process of submitting proposals.
Meanwhile, the “improving quality” group has been working on ideas to develop the candidature and election process, including the possibility to add pictures to the candidature system and booklet, or even coming up with different ways for the candidates to present themselves. Besides that, theyfourth pic have also been discussing the accountability of the Comité Directeur, the role of the advisory board, the election of the hosts for the Agora and the EPM and even the election of certain positions of importante. If that is not enough, they have also developed other ideas, in order to prepare the participants of the Agora, including an Agora for Dummies and Experts session on the first day of the Agora that every AEGEE member can attend as a participant.
Sadly, the “new ideas” group did not work out as planned, but the ideas that were proposed will be brought up in the Progress Meeting, so they can be discussed with the members who are going to be present and even willing to work on them after the Agora.
Written by Matteo Lai, AEGEE-Cagliari.