breaking borders in europe one aegee day at a time by Svenja van der Tol, Secretary General of AEGEE-Europe 2015-2016 in cooperation with the AEGEE Day Core Team
Since the very first day, AEGEE has been putting into practice the vision of a borderless Europe without stereotypes about each other, by breaking the borders in Europe in many different ways. Reflecting on this, AEGEE locals gathered once again to break the borders in Europe while celebrating the very first edition of the AEGEE Day.
After the 30th anniversary celebrations of last year, the members of the Comité Directeur wanted to find a way to celebrate the principles of our organisation on a more regular basis than a special anniversary every five years. After consulting our members at different events, the idea of AEGEE Day was born, with the founding date of AEGEE, 16th of April, as its symbolic date, and ‘breaking borders’ as the selected theme for its first edition.
ty borders, language borders, cultural borders, inequality borders and participation borders. For each type of border, four or five example activities were suggested, which were ranked from ‘easy’ to ‘a challenge’ so locals could pick what they wanted to do based on their time and resources available.
To make it more than just a symbolic date, a Core Team was created, consisting of Pablo Hernández (External Relations Director), Svenja van der Tol (Secretary General), Federica Soro (AEGEE-Cagliari) and Suzan Dilara Tokaç (AEGEE-Eskisehir), and the preparations started. First of all, promotional materials were created and the Facebook page was started in order to make the Network aware of what was going to happen, and ambassadors were assigned to give an extra push to locals to organise an activity to break the borders.
On the first AEGEE Day, 800 organisers of 77 locals and European bodies in our Network joined forces and organised 136 border breaking activities, varying from seminars on entrepreneurship and gender equality to youth exchanges and from cinema talks to living libraries. Besides that, many locals took the opportunity to promote AEGEE in their city and show other young people how the organisation has been breaking borders for thirty years. Many members posted pictures and videos of their activities to celebrate a real borderless AEGEE Day and the Language Interest Group made a video with members all over the Network saying ‘Happy AEGEE Day’ in their own language.
The activities weren’t only aimed at breaking the physical borders between countries, but also those existing between people with different cultures and backgrounds, or the societal borders, like employment and inequality borders. In the AEGEE Day guidelines, six types of borders that the locals could tackle were specified: employment borders, mobili-
A great success, but not a one-time-only story. Together with the Core Team, the Comité Directeur is working on guidelines to make the AEGEE Day happen again next year, and many more years in the future. Even if they are just small activities, together they have an impact and we can break the borders in Europe one AEGEE Day at a time.
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