Beginning of the results' booklet

SuFu time is coming to an end. All our events have finished and new flagship project has already kicked off.
So, now we are here, maybe in the beginning of maybe our most important task: how to show out what we achieved. After the great news of receiving grant for making the booklet, SuFu team gathered once more for the new year, to evaluate the project and make plans for the booklet. Our dear team member Miguel was this time the generous host in Alicante.
The meeting was most productive, not to mention all the fun we had :P We set the timeline, the thematic topics, the structure and many more things that will finally be compiled into great results of the whole "Sustaining our Future" project.
So, stay tuned, if all goes well, you will see it at Agora Leiden. And of course, it will be printed on recycled paper with environmental friendly colours in a company that uses renewable energy :)

Flagship Projects in Nightmare Before Christmas

Writing again from Madrid, same location where we had our workshops during SuFu and the City. So nice good memories... AEGEE-Madrid has organized its LTC, a tradition for december in this South West corner of Europe: Nightmare Before Christmas is the name, and it celebrates now its third edition.

This year the aim is to present a very important set of information to new members of antennae South of the Pyrinees: the importance of Flagship Projects in AEGEE, and especially to show our antennae what can they do in this framework. It has been conceived by a great team of trainers, coming from several antennae under the supervision of the NetCommie Oscar.

We have started early this orning (yeah!) with basic presentations on AEGEE structure and history, to warm up; soon we came into a review of past Flagship Projects, with their objectives and the tools (events) they created to achieve them. Of course we gave special attention to our dear SuFu project, which was presented in detail, event by event, before giving entry to people from Beyond Europe.

Let's hope that, after their case work during the rest of the LTC, an antenna will come up with the motivation, ideas and will to organize another Flagship Project event down here... SuFu and the City was a great success, let's try to repeat it soon!

Alicante awaits us...

Here in Morocco is sooo cold, I want to arrive home in Alicante next week (after a stop in LTC Madrid - Nightmare before Christmas III) and start preparing our traditional NY meeting. This time I will be the host, and it is a pleasure and honour after having been so well treated in Estonia and Greece.

I am really looking forward to meet again all those friends, some of them will be together for 4th year in a row, what a record! For some others will be the first, a nice comeback after a year of absence, and unfortunately some people won't be able to join us this year :( We will have you present in our hearts, that is for sure, because we are the Panda team!

Kadri is working on the program, because we will be there for work; but I will try to prepare the social agenda, with NY party, and hopefully we can squeeze there some outdoor activity as usual (what about climbing the mountain in the picture?). Yes! the sea is there so we will be able to swim again like past year. For those of you who are cold-blooded, there will be also sauna :)

Countdown already started, there are just 12 days till first of you come to Alicante...

SuFuing in the city

4 SuFu Team members...
1 whole antenna working 24h...
A great team of participants...
The support of the Youth in Action program from the European Commission...
A big city to discover from a different point of view...


These are the ingredients for SuFu and the city, a seminar that at this very same moment is having place in Madrid. As we are more or less passing the equator of the week, we can say that it is doing very well. We spent the morning at the waste recycling plant of Valdemingomez; providing service for the whole city (4.5 million people), it is a small city on itself where all the packages and organic waste is prepared for being recycled. On previous days, IUCN speaker Russell Galt showed us the interactions between biodiversity and urban environment, and gave us the opportunity to provide ideas for the future evaluation system of urban biodiversity. We also could learn about citizen initiatives struggling with legislation to have the right to transform an empty space into a public open area for the neighbours, with vegetable garden, sport fields, and even an open air theater! And more and more activities that fill our mornings, afternoons and nights.

Here you can have some impressions from Filip, from AEGEE-Skopje, one of our participants:
"Great seminar, lots of interesting visits and speeches, and all of that in the wonderful city of Madrid. Love it !!". Anyway we will not stop working hard to make the second half even better, we are motivated to close the SuFu cycle with another successful project accomplished!

Now we have to leave you, here it is hard to find some free time :) Participants are now doing a Architecture Photo Rally...

Slow summer time does not stop SuFu team

Hello All!!

I am here in my Moroccan Mountains, tired after a full day driving my 4x4 trying to get some new information about my leopards... and in the evening, trying to revive this blog that has fallen under the lazyness of the summer.

But the lack of news here doesn't mean that we have not been busy! At the moment, the event Danube: Source of Inspiration will be closing in the amazing environment of Danube Delta. I am sure soon our Danube Girls will update you on what happened. And soon, second part of Danube Project will happen in Bratislava - Danube: Most International River in the World (Sept 7-13th).

I am busy with the details of another event, one that is my personal initiative, but only possible with the enthusiastic collaboration of my friends from AEGEE-Madrid: SuFu and the City, from Oct 31st to Nov 8th. More than a week to explore the role of cities in shaping a more sustainable world. 7 days full of workshops and debates, with plenty of visits and conferences, where I hope we can gather 25 young citizens from all over Europe who want to exchange ideas and discover the pros and cons of cities, the incredible power of active citizens in shaping the evolution of their cities, the trends in urban design and architecture, the secrets of urban environments. And during the nights, we will explore "the city that never sleeps"!

We have chosen Madrid because it is a city that has changed a lot in the past years, and more to come with the candidature to host the Olympic Games in 2016. A city with a great park in its heart (Retiro), with one of the best Underground systems, with an active citizneship and gaining multucultural richness year by year, and lots of neighbourhoods with its own personalities. A city to discover in many layers, like a Matrioshka, is waiting for you!

If you want to learn and participate in the discussions, if you have ideas that want to share, then you are lucky!!! You can still apply till Aug 25th! It is an event funded with Youth in Action program, so you may even get flight reimboursement :) You can get more information at the intranet, in facebook, or you can ask directly leaving a comment at this post.

Due to the transition between new and old websites in AEGEE, the best way to apply is to send an email directly to AEGEE Madrid (aegeemadrid (at) gmail.com), including:

If you experience any problem with you application in the website, please send us an email to aegeemadrid@gmail.com including the following information:

Full name:

Aegee antennae:

Studies:

Date fo birth:

Sex:

Address:

Phone:

Email:

Visum required:
Passport no:
Nationality:
Place of birth:

Remarks:

Q1 Why do you want to attend this event?:
Q2 What do you know about sustainable development and urban environments?:

Q3 Tell us something about yourself:

And now I say good bye, but before leaving I inform you that tomorrow is the first day of Ramadan in Morocco... Wish me luck!

SuFu meeting in Brussels

SuFu is having a midyear meeting in Brussels at the moment.
We took this opportunity to evaluate our progress so far, plan for our upcoming events (they're going to be utterly cool, so stay tuned!!) and last but not least enjoy and improve our team spirit and try the combination of Dutch asparagus and Belgian peas in a risotto. And as it was the EU's Green Week in Brussels, we also visited there.

Because someone tried to poison our highly successful SuFu project manager, SuFu panda had to come to save the day. Naturally, we used this opportunity to make a video about all the adventures this brave panda had in AEGEE's headquarters. Of course we will share this with you soon :-)

At the meeting we had a lot of creative sessions, defined the work to be done in the future and planned how we would do the dissemination of all our results.
Because the network commission was present at the CD house too, we did a European Night together, which started with a bit late, but utterly marvelous pizza dinner made by Olya and Thomas. After that we did the presentations about each other's cultures and tasted from the nice food and beverages coming from all the different countries. The Estonians (Tiit in particular) really put their effort in it with building a genuine Estonian Sauna in a tent in the garden. Of course it took some Dutch ingeniuty to realise this Estonian project, but the end result was marvelous. And so SuFu kept it's tradition to introduce the merits of Estonian sauna to yet another member of the Comité Directeur (and all other people present).

Stay tuned for more information about our upcoming events, there are a lot of nice things coming up: Activities in the Danube project in the Danube Delta (Romania) and Bratislava (Slovakia), SuFu in the city in Madrid (Spain).

SuFu panda visited Ljubljana on his EDE journey

One month ago a decision was made that this year SuFu panda will also visit Ljubljana among other European cities on his EDE journey. Because of this high visit we needed to start making our plan very quickly, as we really wanted to prepare something big to surprise our dear guest. On the first meeting, three weeks ago, the AEGEE-Ljubljana EDE team gathered and after a long brainstorming session we all agreed, that we wish to prepare a nice celebration eco event somewhere in nature, where we can join serious environmental topics with pure fun. So we decided to make an afternoon event under the blue sky in Tivoli, the biggest park in Ljubljana. We imagined preparing a big promotion campaign about European Day of Environment. Eco booth joined with Eco street action seemed a pretty good idea for convincing people to act more environmentally friendly. To make things little bit more interactive we also decided to prepare two workshops: the first one about climate changes in connection with renewable energies and a second one about the healthy way of living through sport activities (this time we’ve tried Pilates). But that’s not all, as we all know the European Parliament elections are just in front of us, so we also decided to finish the Yvote project in Ljubljana and we promoted European elections through the eyes of the environment as we were encouraging people to go to the elections, to vote and to take into consideration the environmental aspect while voting.

Three days ago the big day finally came. The weather forecast wasn’t one of the best for having an outside event, so we were keeping our fingers crossed that meteorologists made some mistakes while forecasting the weather for Slovenia. We, a team full of positive energy, gathered in the park and surrounded by nature, started with the last preparations in the early afternoon. When SuFu panda joined us at 4 p.m. and the event officially started, everything was ready for the first visitors to come. Despite some clouds the sun was shining strongly and people were coming by on their bikes, some of them were even running by, but most of them were just on the walk through the nice park with their children and pets or they were on the way home from work. When they saw that there is something unusual happening in the park, they’ve stopped and were curiously asking us what is going on. We explained them, that we’re celebrating EDE and that we wished every single one of them to start doing something good for the environment. We gave them some useful materials about different environmental topics and some materials about European elections. For the children we prepared some nicely coloured eco balloons.

We’ve also gotten two very interesting visits. First there were two policemen on horses who scared us little bit, because they could have started complicating, but in the end everything turned out ok. We gave them some apples for the horses and they took a small snack for themselves. Then they wished us luck with the weather and went their own way :) The second interesting visit was when a mother with a child came by and stopped for a while, searching for more information on what we’re doing. Then she found out we are from AEGEE and became very sentimental. She started explaining to us that she was also an AEGEEan in her younger age and that she had traveled the whole Europe with AEGEE while learning a lot and having so much fun during that time. It looked like she envied us a little bit our youthfulness, but at the same time she was so grateful for that amazing AEGEE experience and just before she left, she wished us good luck with our future projects.

As I mentioned before, we also prepared two workshops. The first one was about climate changes and the speaker from Association for Sustainable Development Focus gave us some general information about it and explained to us, what every person can do to make he’s ecological footprint smaller. The second one, Pilates workshop, was made in a more funny way and while we’re outside exercising in the nature, we made something good for our body, mind and health in general. And don’t think that guys didn’t try it, they did, we have proof; just look at the photos carefully :)

When the official part of EDE event was over, it was of course time for the unofficial part, so we went together to the eco party, where AEGEE-Ljubljana board members, SU Ljubljana team members and some of the participants of the event joined us and had fun with us. In conclusion, everything was just great - green program, cosy atmosphere, many interested visitors, nice and funny organizers and even the weather was beautiful – great success! In the end I would like to deeply thank my dear EDE team, you’ve made this great event possible and you’ve made it so special, thank you – hvala!

Panda hugs from AEGEE-Ljubljana EDE team ;-)

Photography by Blaž Šteblaj

Great week with SuFu in Copenhagen

Today morning was the last time, when participants of "Sustainable SCANdinavia" gathered together in the hostel common room in Copenhagen, to look back to this great week and see what they had learned.
It both seems like ages ago and like yesterday at the same time, when participants were welcomed in the hostel, where they also got their own personal mug, that was used during the whole week (no plastic cups were used during this event).

It was nice to see people using their SuFu mugs everywhere. Hopefully they will be also used in future events :P

Copenhagen has many sustainability practices to show: everyone knows about the big amount of bicycles in the city, in fact the city hall representative, who gave us open speech for the whole week, also arrived on a bike. Alternative community Christiania represents it's own version of sustainability, where we had guided tour.

Another aspect came with the visit to waste management center: Danes seem to have recycling in their blood and public recycling centers are used often.
It is also no problem to find organic food in Denmark, even visiting a most common supermarket, the organisers could find enough products to make almost totally organic dinner for all the participants. On the last evening we even got the chance to dine in a 100% organic restaurant, where everything from the clothes of the cooks to the drinks in the bar was organic. Plus the meals, that were made right in front of the customers in the open kitchen.

It was great to spend this week with so nice participants, who really made the event come alive. Besides the crazy parties, participants still managed to wake up every morning on time (big thanks to our wake up responsible Miguel!) and stayed energetic during all the days (thanks to Percin for all the energizers!). Also weather seemed to like us, as on the last days some people even managed to get small sunburn.


The concrete results of the "Sustainable SCANdinavia" are probably still to come. Many nice ideas were created for next possible events, and if we are lucky, we might even have 2nd Scandinavian sustainability lesson still this year in Sweden.

Finally I would like to thank Karmen from Ljubljana, who was one of our trainers and AEGEE-Copenhagen guys, for arranging us probably the most delicious dinners in the history of AEGEE events and showing us the Copenhagen nightlife! My last thanks go to Katrin and Dragana, who were the managers for this project and worked on it for many months. Well done, girls!

Think Tank - small update

And we owe you a post about how the Think Tank went. I can be short about it: The think tank was great! Around 50 participants from 11 countries took part: The Netherlands, Poland, Belgium, Italy, Bulgaria, Serbia, Turkey, Greece, Rumania, Germany and Russia. The first day we visited the European Renewable Energy House, where we had a great tour along all energy saving measures, a lobby tour through Brussels by Corporate Europe and workshops in the CD house. The second day we had the Think Tank itself: 6 hours to define an answer to a question by one of our partners. And the last day we went to discover Brussels.

Our participants were very nice! Besides being eager for information and working hard to finish the answer paper in time, as organisers we als had great fun with Greek participants feeding us chocolate, Serbians bringing their rakia in the evening, Diego helping out where-ever he could, and some knew the center of Brussels even better than the organisers. There is no space to mention all. For the organisers it was just great to see this enthousiasm, it was the best reward for the efforts they had taken to organise.

And the content was great! All groups made their best of the questions asked to them, and the jury had the difficult task to pick the best from them. The winner was Team Adioma, the group with members of AEGEE-Brussels and AEGEE-Leuven. Congratulations to Ioana, Marieke, Mathias and Adeline, they proved not to let the heavy international participant group scare them, and took a home victory. The second place was shared by two teams: M.T.E.D. (Mediterranean Team for Energy and Development - a team with Greek and Turkish members) and Can7ina (with participants from Germany and The Netherlands).
For more impressions of the day, you can find the press release here and pictures here.

As an event like this is never organised without help, I'd also like to take this opportunity for thanking everyone who helped making this event such a great success! Percin, Robin, Kadri and Ana for helping out in the whole organisation, it couldn't have been done without you! Romain for helping out in PR, Diego too for his great help in doing PR, and for meeting the incoming participants. A big thank you to TUSIAD for organising the reception for us and to our partners for providing the questions - it would not have been possible without this input and help. Andrey Shadurskiy for sharing his pictures with us (picture 2 and 4 in this blog are his). And all the lodgers, speakers, workshop leaders, etc. for their support. And last but not least: all participants. You were great!!

Thursday, Friday & Saturday: Think Tank!

Hi SuFu bloggies,

This Thursday, Friday and Saturday our think tank: "Create and In(ter)novate!" is going to take place in Brussels. As it is quite a busy period, this will be a short blog. But I will try to make it up to you by promissing to publish a long post about it afterwards (And some of you I might see there).

These days the last things are coming together: confirmations from speakers, jury members, trying to get some last discounts for the participants, arranging all the lodging, etc. But it is going to be nice, because at the end of the week the result will be:
The first ever pan-European youth Think Tank on mobility and energy.
It is going to be the first time to gather many young Europeans in this format, to really make and propose fresh and innovative solutions to existing problems in companies and organisations. Participants will meet other young students and young professionals from all over Europe, and can even earn 1000 Euro with using their creativity in a useful way. And to top it all off the think tank will be closed with a very nice and luxury reception in Brussels at TUSIAD, the Turkish Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association, who are so kind to host this for us.
If you are interested: there are still some places left for those who wish to participate!

For more information you can check our website.
And to apply click here
Participation is open to all European students and young professionals.

Hope to see you around at one of our activities!! (and why not this Think Tank ;-)

Martien

Warming up for Copenhagen

Part of SuFu-Team met in Copenhage for some days (19th to 23rd Feb), to make last preparations for the first chapter in the Sustainable SCANdinavia series... It was Dragana and Katrin as main coordinators of the event, and Percin and Miguel (writing this) for collaboration. And the people from AEGEE-Copenhagen too, of course. Some other members were busy organizing the THINK TANK in Brussels, or participating at the Y-Vote event in München.

We fell in love with the city when we walked around visiting different locations that participants will enjoy; we discussed the programme and made some rearrangements; we had a look at some of the applications and got enthusiastic about the high level of them. We also made last agreements for the venue where the conferences will take place, and found a possible place for the opening; lastly we talked with people at the hostel. We (of course!) also took the pulse of Copenhagen nights, finding one or two places that we are sure our happy participants will love!

On personal level, it was my second time in the city and it snowed everyday, as the first time did. No matter what members of AEGEE-København tell about not snowing often in their city, if you are coming I advise you take warm clothes and good shoes! :)


PS: Pictures of people working are usually boring, so this time we show you some more interesting ones :)

SuFu Panda getting ready for EBM

As all AEGEE members know, next weekend will be our European Boards Meeting in Torino. And yes, SuFu Panda will be also there :)
So, those of you going there, you will be lucky first ones to see our mascotte Panda in public.
Of course, in EBM you will also have the chance to get to know more about our upcoming activities, of which to think tank and Scandinavia visit we have already open applications (go check: http://www.aegee.org/events).
You can meet SuFu team in Roundtable Discussions, in AEGEE cafe and also in workshop, that we will share with one of our partners. So will get the chance to hear also, why and how people are dealing with sustainability outside AEGEE.
And of course, we will have some surprises ;)

Hope to meet and talk to many of you in Torino next week!

SUFU on Facebook

Dear SUFU fans,

Recently Facebook group "Sustaining our Future 2009" was created. In 24 hours we managed to have 224 members, and this number is increasing constantly. If you are not there yet, please do not hesitate any more, support our project and JOIN NOW :)

Sustainably yours,
Dragana

Granted YiA for SCANdinavia project

Just after SUFU meeting in Messolonghi, I received e-mail from Danish National Agency that our application for Scandinavia project is approved!

That means that 35 AEGEE members from all over the network will be hosted by AEGEE Copenhagen from 30th March to 5th April 2009. They will have chance to discover, learn, discuss and practice through many various activities on the hottest topic nowadays - Sustainable development . They will meet Scandinavian top experts dealing with sustainable development, renewable energy and sustainable lifestyles, and visit the most successful enviroment responsible companies in Denmark, from recycling centre to organic farms, wind energy parks, etc...

But we will not reveal everything now, just keep in mind that this will be the event with totally innovative concept to AEGEE. And not to mentioned that it will be the most ambitious Scandinavian project in history of AEGEE.

So, be prepared, after a long time AEGEE Copenhagen is back on the track together with SUFU .

Stay tooned, more information about event and application procedure will follow soon.

BIG.NEW.GREEN.YOU greetings :)

Hard-working in Messologgi

Here we are, some active AEGEE members from quite a lot of locals and countries, gathered all around the SuFu Project (Sustaining our Future if you don't know it yet) to make this project successful in its most important year, 2009.

During next year we will be busy almost every month with different events and activities. In February we will have the EBM; in March we have the innovative Think Tank near Brussels; in April and May we have Agora in Magusa, and the SCANdinavia Study Trip. June is the month of the European Day of Environment; and so on... Next entries of the blog will explain these actions in detail, come back to get more information.

During these days we are really enjoying Greek hospitality, indulging ourselves in copious and delicious meals, stealing a glance at the sea from the window of the room while we work, discovering the surprising nighlife of a small city. We are taking advantage of this opportunity to develop our team, knowing each other better and learning to work together in a coordinated way.

Being part of a European Project is an enriching experience; even if it consumes a considerable amount of time, it pays back well!

Looking forward to meet in Greece

I am really happy that once that I have gone through some days of family, mountains of food and several kilometers and means of transport, I will be one more year able to spend my New Year Eve (and surrounding days) working for AEGEE and more specially, the Environmental side of AEGEE.

In 2006 I was there when the EnWG seed was planted. In 2007 we developed the basics of the Flagship Project into a program that is able to generate movement inside our network.

Once again, here I am ready to meet old friends, make new ones, discover how they spend these days in Greece, what their traditions are, and some surprises that always await around the corner when you travel abroad.

Some people say, concerned, that Greece is not a safe place to visit in these days; but I am one of that people thinking that the best way to regain normality is acting normally. I will act carefully but I will not allow some vandals to ruin my visit to one country that has always been in my list "to come back" since I visited it when I was 11.