No, AEGEE is not just organizing parties. With the help of local working groups, a lot of antennae offer a wide area of activities for its members – from various types of sports to serious thematic work about current issues. Many of these local working groups are more active than their European counterpart. The Golden Types asked three antennae which working groups they have and what they do: AEGEE-Izmir, AEGEE-Bakı and AEGEE-Gliwice.
AEGEE-Izmir: Working Groups for PR, Projects, Social Responsibility, Activities and Fundraising
GT: Ayşegül, your Public Relations Working Group published many great photos on the Internet. What are you doing there?
Ayşegül Gökdağ, PR Responsible of AEGEE-Izmir: The PR Working Group of AEGEE-İzmir is working on our website, creates new designs of logos, new Public Relation materials, flags, mugs and many other things. We are preparing the visual identities for the events, activities and other types of entertainments of our antenna.
GT: How often do you meet and how many members do you have in your PRWG?
Ayşegül: We have meetings once in a week. Our PRWG has 14 members and they are divided into seven groups, which are working in their own field.
GT: Subgroups in a working group? Interesting… What are these subgroups?
Ayşegül: These fields are photography and video shooting, content preparing, visual identity editing, graphic design, website, information and incoming and last but not least press and social media.
GT: Can you give example of what you did this week in the PRWG?
Ayşegül: On our meeting this Tuesday we redecorated our room, started redesigning some posters and our logo. We also worked on our new website.
GT: Do you also have other local working groups?
Ayşegül: Yes. We have groups for Projects, Social Responsibility and Activities as well as fundraising. In my opinion each of them is a working group, as people develop themselves in these teams.
AEGEE-Bakı: Language Working Group, Education WG, Culture WG and Travel WG
GT: Orkhan, your Language Group is very active on Facebook. Can you tell more about it?
Orkhan Babayev, President AEGEE-Bakı: We had the 4th session of our LoveLanguage project, which is organised by our local Language Working Group. The project brings together students, who practice their skills in foreign languages, mainly English and Spanish. This project lasts for six weeks and ends on 6th of December. The members enjoy conversations on various kinds of topics, workshop, a movie night and a party which will feature colours of different cultures. This event is held on every weekend, but also we have some unofficial meetings.
GT: How many members do you have?
Orkhan: We have about 50 concrete members. However, in our local projects it is possible to see also the participation of non-members, since often they decide to become member after being part of a project of AEGEE- Bakı.
GT: What other local working groups does your antenna have?
Orkhan: Besides the Language Working Group, we have an Education WG, a Culture WG and a Travel WG.
GT: What are they doing?
Orkhan: For instance, the Education WG organizes different trainings on how to educate yourself, or other trainings associated with education. Furthermore, our EWG has plans to organize some intellectual games, such as Jeopardy and What?Where?When?
GT: What about the Culture WG?
Orkhan: The Culture WG mostly organizes trips to nearby open museums of Azerbaijan. On Facebook you can see the title of that project as “Pearls of Azerbaijan”. Moreover, the CWG organizes presentation contests on different topics, especially related to the relations between Azerbaijan and Europe.
GT: And how active is your Travel WG?
Orkhan: The Travel WG is not so active as the others, but I was witness to their events, such as trip to the forest on the mountains. The participants used to stay in tents in the middle of the forest for two days, it was kind of extreme. Moreover, this project was held in cooperation with another organization called ExtremeClub. Moreover, there were some trips to different regions of Azerbaijan.
AEGEE-Gliwice: Human Resources WG, Public Relations WG, Fundraising WG and Sport Working Group
GT: Which working groups do you have in your antenna?
Dominika Kołodziejczak, Secretary of AEGEE-Gliwice: We have got working groups like Human Resources, Public Relations, Fundraising and Sport Working Group right now.
GT: That’s a lot! How many members does your antenna have?
Dominika: We have got above 50 members and all the time new people, who want to learn more about AEGEE and our projects, are writing to us.
GT: Which of these working groups is the most successful one?
Dominika: Hmm… it is a hard question, because we had some changes in strategy of work in our local, but right now the most popular group is the PRWG and also Sport WG.
GT: What is your local Sport WG doing?
Dominika: The Sport Working Group is organizing: mountain trips as well as volleyball and salsa classes each Thursday. In the vacation period we had a canoe trip, before the vacation we took part in the AEGEE Bike Week and about two weeks ago we had an opportunity to organize a climbing wall meeting. We are planning to make a laser paintball meeting in the near future. We have plans for many others things, but it depends what kind of physical activity our members would like to try.
GT: How did it start?
Dominika: It started last year with our first volleyball meeting and zumba lessons for all the residents of the city for free, as well because of the mountain trips for our members and our friends.
GT: How do you decide about the activities in the Sport WG?
Dominika: Everyone who wants to do something common with sports can write on our mailing list and discuss it with the others if we want to do this or not.
GT: And what is the PRWG doing?
Dominika: I can give you some examples: on the last meeting there were about 15 members. Right now our PRWG is working on Christmas cards, but also members of this group are taking care about our website and our Fanpage on Facebook. They are responsible for making leaflets and posters. They are making many things connected with the PR in each project which is organized by AEGEE-Gliwice: documents, media, honorary patronages and so on. Right now members of PRWG are working hard on changing our logo, a project of hoodies and t-shirts, but it is top secret how it will look like! You need to wait for it!