Spring is Network Meeting season. AEGEE-Brno hosted 23 participants at their Network Meeting, which took place from 30th of April till 3rd of May. The content was managed by Network Commissioner Tekla Hajdu. Jana Védlová, main organiser from AEGEE-Brno, told the Golden Times why it was a great success.
GT: What was the main focus of the NWM? I saw something about fund-raising…
Jana Védlová: Yes, correct. Our main focus was fundraising, but we tackled all the important topics that are currently hot in AEGEE – Democracy in Practice, new strategies of learning in AEGEE, Policy Officers and many others. I think content-wise our NWM was full of great sessions and even experienced members could learn new things, including me.
GT: What were the participants thematically most interested in?
Jana: According to the open space session, lot of participants were interested in discussing how to implement content in AEGEE events, how to attract new members, if with content or fun events. I believe quite an interesting discussion was unfolding and the participants continued this discussion even over lunch. Moreover, as our NWM focused on Fundraising, we had a session on the Erasmus+ programme and its possibilities; for lot of people it was quite a new piece of information, which interested them as well.
GT: What did it mean for your antenna to organise the NWM?
Jana: Our core organizing team was rather small, I really enjoyed being part of it. We developed a great spirit and trust among the four of us. We had also lot of helpers, who were able to experience a European event in their own city – to meet new people, learn about fundraising and AEGEE and to experience AEGEE spirit. And of course it put our active team even closer together, organizing a European event or a Summer University is always a great team building factor!
GT: How was the local organisation? What did you offer the participants?
Jana: I hope that our organisation was good, I would even say great! We tried to offer our participants as much as possible. They had full board and two or three coffee breaks a day covered by the fee; the distances between gym, workshop space, restaurant and city center were really short… Well, we tried to make it nice and easy for our participants as well as our trainers, hopefully we succeeded.
GT: How were the parties?
Jana: The parties were fun! We didn’t have any specific theme parties, but we had a lot of participants with party and dancing spirit!
GT: What kind of feedback did you get from Netcom, speakers, trainers and participants?
Jana: So far we got only positive feedback from everybody, for which we are very happy. Tekla as a Network Commisioner together with other trainers did a very good job! So I believe everybody was satisfied with the content and the fruitful discussions! Organisationwise we got no complaints except that the restaurant we were eating at should have reserved for us completely non-smoking space, which unfortunately wasn’t always 100% possible, but that was my fault because I never thought this restaurant even had a smoking part. And we haven’t received yet responses from the evaluation form, so we’ll see how it goes then!
GT: How big is your antenna and what are the next big plans for this year?
Jana: We have around 60 members out of which around 15 to 20 of us are active! So far we have planned a couple of smaller local events for the upcoming weeks like an LTC, a picnic, a blood donating action and of course a Summer University, which will take place in the beginning of July. Now we are in the process of planning it, fully focused on making our SU one amazing event! And in September there will be another one of our bigger local events for a wider public, the International Dinner, which is financially supported by the city of Brno. It creates a certain pressure to make it better each time we organize it.
GT: Anything you would like to add?
Jana: I just would like to say a huge “thank you” to everybody who was involved! Especially to our Network Commisioner Tekla Hajdu, who excelled in the content organisation of our NWM, our great trainers Antonija Parat, Luca Bergamini, Tessa Speelman and David Inashvili and of course huge thanks to my AEGEE-Brno team! Love them all and hopefully we will continue in being active and organizing great European events!
