Preface by Editor-In-Chief
Key2Europe 2019-2020
BLUE What comes up to your mind when you think about this colour? I am thinking about three things. The ocean: deep and silent, keeping unknown secrets. The sky: bright and warm, sparkled with birds who are leaving to foreign places. And AEGEE: an association reminiscent of the people who are living in Europe, united in diversity and shared hopes. Dear Reader, We, as an international organisation, had to face a new reality this year, the reality of closed borders. Caught in this situation, we realised our privileges of attending international events, borderless traveling and having friendships all over Europe. We needed to cancel our Spring Agora in Armenia and our Autumn Agora in Moscow, we cancelled every Summer University and we cancelled or postponed uncountable events on an international and local level. But besides that, we were able to build a new community. “AEGEEans in quarantine”, an international online group, supporting people who were alone during a lockdown. We managed this together with online training sessions, online workshops, online quiz nights and live calls. AEGEE turned 35 and we celebrated online. We developed ourselves and we have grown together. Our Projects and Working Groups have continued independent of Corona. We advanced the discourse about equal rights and gender equality and we fought for sustainability and against climate change. We had the first online Agora in AEGEE’s history and we had a great Autumn Agora in Salerno and an amazing European Planning Meeting in Barcelona before Covid-19. We are waiting to organise new Summer Universities next year, hoping for the SUn. And we look forward to the first Agora in Russia and to catch up with the first Agora in the South Caucasus in 2021. We, as AEGEEans, learned how important it is to stay together in troubled times and we are focussing on our future. We will be able to see the ocean again; we will be able to share the look into the sky with our friends again and we will discover foreign places in Europe. We will meet each other at local and international events. And we will appreciate and use these possibilities in a better way than we ever did before. As you can see, it was an exciting and colourful year and we are going to show all these different colours between the lines of the annual Key to Europe. I cannot wait to see you somewhere in Europe - again. Maike Schulte, AEGEE-Bamberg Editor-in-Chief, Key to Europe 2019/2020
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