office in Brussels where the EB could live together for one year concentrating only on the work for ESN. The first step towards the realisation of this goal was made during our Executive Board Meeting in Brussels where we met with representatives from other international student organisations - which already have an office in the capital of Europe - and tried to gather more information. Also the decision to replace the Action-Plan Promotion and Communication by Long term vision was an intention to bring more continuity and efficiency into the work of the whole network and our work. ...“ - Stefanie Josefa Kothmiller, President of ESN International The ESN Partnership project (PSP) had been going on for nearly 2 years at this point. It all started at the AGM in Portoroz in Slovenia. The “known” pairings were thus far: ESN Graz – ESN Turku, ESN Athens – ESN Maastricht, ESN Zurich – ESN Lund, ESN Bochum – ESN Budapest, ESN Verona – ESN Utrecht, ESN Amsterdam – ESN Campobasso and ESN Genova – ESN Helsinki. One of the projects of this mandate was the ESN Book, which was finished in 2002 – 2003 and given to the sections at the AGM Siena 2003. Another heavily debated topics at the time was: “Who is or could be Alumni of ESN International?” One part of the International Board thinks that only people of the EB, IB, OC, people working in international working groups like the “in common” newsletter team, organisers of big events and people who did something special, should be considered Alumni of ESN International. Why so restricting? Because ESN international is a group of people that did something together; they had something in common. They can be regarded as one group with the same experiences, they can help each other, share memories. Alumni is defined as ‘people that shared the same experiences’. Therefore it can be reasoned that the Alumni Network of ESN International is intended only for those individuals who worked on the international level. People from the local level can be part of their local section’s alumni, but not from ESN International. The ideas of being Alumni of ESN International and having been a member of ESN at the local level should not be mixed up. Those are two separate things serving another goal. There was also another opinion in the International Board, some people who did not want to exclude people that had been a part of ESN. They think that everybody, including people from the local sections should be able to take part in it. The opinions is that it would not make a big difference because not many local section members would necessarily sign up to join the network’s alumni board. So, Markus Dicks, Janna Koivisto and Svante Edqvist, proposed to the AGM to remove the restrictions currently hindering ESN actives from becoming Alumni members. Restricting who can or cannot be an Alumni member is totally contrary to everything that ESN is about. ESN is about networking and meeting people from different countries. The other meaning was that it does not make any sense
18 | HB 2014
to have an Alumni network, which is already quite weak and not working very well because of a lack of interest of members, and when the alumni do not necessarily share one common thing. That is a shame considering the effort they had once put into the work on the International level. That is why they are Alumni of ESN INTERNATIONAL and not of local sections.
ESN in 2002-2003 The AGM 2002 was held in Lugo / Spain and had the slogan “Before … and after” The National Representatives elected the Executive Board: the President was Hanna-Maija Saarinen from ESN Åbo Akademi / Finland, the Vice President and Webmaster was Vegard Eid Mediås from ESN Trondheim / Norway, the Treasurer was Barbara Jost from Switzerland, the Secretary was Wolfgang Schlegel, Dortmund / Germany and the Regular board members were Anna Kwiatkowska from Poland and Chaya Duppen from the Netherlands. In January 2003 the 151 sections are now distributed throughout 24 countries in the following way: Austria (10), Belgium (4), Czech Republic (2), Denmark (3), Estonia (1), Finland (12), France (7), Germany (10), Greece (1), Hungary (7), Ireland (4), Italy (23), Lithuania (1), Norway (4), Poland (6), Portugal (3), Russia (1), Slovenia (4), Spain (16), Sweden (9), Switzerland (5), The Netherlands (13), Ukraine (1), United Kingdom (1) The new countries this time around are Czech Republic and Lithuania, also seeing the return of the United Kingdom. Russia and Ukraine joined the network during this time as well, but contacts was lost after the first year. Six board meetings were organised on the international level EBM Limerick / Ireland, April 2002 International Board Meeting in Helsinki / Finland, June 2002 Executive Board Meeting in Dortmund / Germany, August 2002 Executive Board Meeting in Zürich / Switzerland, October 2002 International Board Meeting in Milan / Italy, November 2002 International Board Meeting in Kranj / Slovenia and Vienna / Austria, January 2003 The Southern European Platform, SEP, was held in Pécs / Hungary from the 8th to the 12th of May 2002. This was the second SEP in ESN history. As it is a bit unclear at this time which sections belong to SEP, there were peo-