fennemat's blog

Being President means

- having the overview of what is going on in ESN
- supporting, motivating, coordinating other Board Members (and all ESNers)
- having an open ear to every kind of new ideas, suggestions, feedback, complaints, congratulations
- giving new ideas, suggestions, feedback, congratulations
- representing ESN to the outside world (meetings, conferences, seminars etc.)
- representing International student affairs (at the same conferences, seminars, etc. as above)
- planning, coordinating, processing information

This wide spectrum of 'general' tasks is amazingly interesting and fulfilling, but it's not the end of the line. Two projects enrich my volunteering day, which you can see below.

Dear WG members

we should make a statement about which kind of sponsors we think are good for ESN International.

This will be presented to the Board and if judged excellent (what it will be ;-), adopted as general understanding regarding future sponsoring.

Here we shouldn't make a list of names but more of characteristics (e.g. "a sponsor of ESN has to have at least 20'000 employees" etc.).

In 2007, we celebrated the 20 Anniversary of the Erasmus Programme, however still problems exist. It is now time to solve them!

For this reason, ESN International upon request from the European Commission has developed the PRIME project to identify obstacles towards recognition of studies abroad. This project will reshape the landscape of student mobility through some easy steps:

This month's travels made me thinking about obscurities concerning living together. You see, coming from Switzerland, living in Belgium, seeing the EU from Brussels-eyes, traveling to Cyprus gives a little insight into divided communities. We all know how Switzerland works and functions though it is a small miracle to combine and integrate 4 languages (thus cultures) in one small piece of land.

Back to Brussels the AGM seems far away, but memories are still vivid. Good memories of amazing moments (also hot discussions :-) with amazing people. So, let's not talk about life in Brussels which is kind of back to old times. Let's not talk about drawing new concepts, working on running projects and training the new (few) Board members.

Cause I didn't have too much time to update my Supernova blog, here are the latest and last articles as Vice-President which I could write for the ESN Switzerland Newticker...
The next ones will follow more regularly. ESN CH allowed me to continue writing :-)

As presented at AGM in Besançon, there is this idea of having several EVS Volunteers going from one section to another. Interested? Good, so let's get started.
Before we can apply for money from the European Commission to send ESN members from one section to another, there are some steps required before! Read more below and follow these to make a great project happening.

Today is a good day for ESN!!!

We received a signed contract from Universum which will be highly beneficial for ESNers individually and ESN as a whole. In short:

Summer time, holiday time. What's true for (nearly) everybody, it's true for us as well. In August, we took some time off from our work over here. Giorgio went to Italy, so did Francesca. Kamila visited Poland, and well Andim stayed in Turkey... Since she still was not awarded a visa, she unfortunately couldn't join us yet. And me?

Dear 20 Anniversary Team

Tomorrow is THE day. The last official day of this wonderful and amazing project will soon be reality.

So, thank you. Thank you for your work, your input, your determination and your motivation to make a wonderful thing happening.

I guess, we succeeded in what we wanted. We learned and taught. We promoted Erasmus and ESN and we can be proud of ourselves because we did it in a good way. (oks, there are always little things which can be improved but let's not talk about them at this historical moment :-)