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 :)

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...

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).

Team Update March

Hello SuFu friends!!

This week I will write a team update, so you can have a general idea of what the SuFu team is dealing with at this moment. Most of us have exams at the moment, but that is not stopping SuFu!!

But before, I want to introduce you Milana, our new PR manager; she is from AEGEE-Ljublana, and joined our team with high motivation, bringing us more creativity and new inspiration. you can find a hint on her work at the SuFu newsletter of February.

Our manager, Kadri, keeps her busy coordinating the team, but had time to attend the Y-vote event in München to present SuFu there, together with Maria; they gave a workshop about Renewable Energies. Martien and Ana (Percin supporting them) work hard nowadays to make the Think Tank a event where creativity and ideas flourish. Katrin is in charge of the Sustainable SCANdinavia event in Copenhagen, while Dragana roams in Cambodian wilderness on a trip with her Faculty...

Tiit is getting ready to gather a group of experienced members to develop the concept of Sustainability Trainings. There will be a meeting soon, just stay tuned if you think you can contribute.

Georgios is waiting for these two events to be accomplished to start gathering results and evaluation. Olga is quite busy at her studies too, but she started gathering antennae that want to organize an event for the European Day of Environment. Will you be one of them? :)

Our Danube girls, Iulia and Flavia, mix exams with project coordination in perfect harmony, and we wish them good luck at both!

Miguel is still in his Moroccan mountains, trying to hunt leopards (with a camera), and working together with AEGEE-Madrid to prepare the application for the SuFu and the City event; this weekend Miguel will try to meet with Maria in Fez; after München, she is taking a break at her FR activities to do a work visit to Morocco. Let's see if communications and bad weather allow this meeting :)

As you see, busy time for the SuFu's... But we love it!

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 :)

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.

The first words of SuFuBlog

Hello all

This is the first post in the blog for the Flagship Project of AEGEE 2008-09.

We are a motivated group of members of AEGEE. AEGEE is the biggest multidisciplinar student association in Europe. Some months ago we started a big project called Sustaining Our Future. We want to make information on Sustainable Development available to European Youth, for them to be able to take responsible decissions. We are aware that there is lack of knowledge on the field even though the topic is on everyday news, on political agendas and in discussions among friends.