SHARING IS CARING VOL.1 18.April, 8pm Minutes Present: 7 NetCommies, 13+ participants Problems: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Low budget makes promotion difficult Members are not students, so it’s difficult to find new members Too much different information about AEGEE, diffcult to present Depends on the people giving presentations to new members - they need to have AEGEE experience 5. Low visibility 6. Competing against other student organisations 7. There is no student culture of volunteering, organisations etc in the city Solutions: 1. If you have problems with financial resources for promotion - use SU maps, presentation from AEGEE, ask for rooms from the university. You can definitely find some free or very cheap options. 2. Too much information about AEGEE: a. Prepare an elevator pitch to always know how to explain AEGEE b. Share personal experiences - they are more attractive to new people c. Try to understand who are the people in front of you when promoting AEGEE and what they want, talk to them about the things they are interested in d. For example you can make posters at introduction event with different topics of AEGEE (SU, parties, Erasmus+, civic education etc) and then ask the people to go to the one they are most interested about, this way you can involve them in the things they are actually interested in, not talk about general AEGEE 3. Teach your members what AEGEE is (more than just the basic presentation and toolkits) so that they know how to promote it correctly. Give them also the skills to promote it, before you ask them to do it 4. Visibility: . Make flashmobs a. Wear your mascot’s clothes to university
b. Share free tea in Uni and ask them to a tea evening, where they get some free tea and snacks in a small setting where you can talk about AEGEE c. Organise an introduction period to AEGEE and Uni life - to new students. For example they pay a small fee for 4 weeks of fun introductional events. Especially when cooperating with university and giving them city tours, pub crawls, information about uni itself in addition to AEGEE. 5. Competition with other organisations: . Find common grounds with competing organisations and try to organise some events together. You will get more interested people and it will be easier to organise if someone else is helping. Both organisations win! a. Try to organise a Student Organisations’ Day in your University if there is not such a thing yet. Get many organisations to present themselves there and you will get more visibility than by just organising something like this at home. 6. If there’s not a strong student culture in your city, you can’t fix this alone. You have to talk to university(/ies) and other student organisations. You can create a big campaign with common recruitment week and make it clear for first-year students that it is normal to be active in organisations. Promotion of SUs o promoting SUs works, but you need to understand that the tools you use to recruit, decide the people that join. If you promote SU - you will get party people etc o You can also promote AEGEE by sharing stories of previous members who are now successful o Make a SU strategy, so that before and after the SU period the people will stay active o Use also the school start period, not only the SU period to promote Open LTC’s for externals to give them a better insight of what AEGEE is straight away and use it as a recruitment tool Headhunting for specific members: make a plan of what do you want to do with your local and which kind of members you need for it. Then invite people to just help you with this specific thing (for example, invite people interested in organising international events and use them to organise a NWM, SU etc). During this task they will become involved in AEGEE and possibly join. See if you can start an Erasmus buddy program, if there is no ESN in the city. This way you involve local young people interested in foreigners and Europe and connect them with Erasmus students. They may become interested in AEGEE. This also keeps good relations with university, as they like that you’re helping Erasmus students. You can also start recruiting already in final classes of high schools (when they are adults), this way you grow a new generation of AEGEEans and recruit them before other student organisations

Organise a workshop on some topic important for the students and make a short presentation of AEGEE in the beginning, if the workshop is interesting, they might become interested in AEGEE as well