ESN celebrates the 25th Anniversary at AGM Granada 2012!

From the 22nd-26th March, the biggest event in the calendar of ESN took place in Granada, Spain. The Annual General Meeting 2012 was organized by ESN Granada and it gathered 550 representatives from 33 countries and nearly 400 Higher Education Institutions.  The event also combined the AGM with the celebrations of the 25th Anniversary of the Erasmus Programme, and Granada was a fitting location for this since its university sends and receives the highest number of Erasmus students each year and the University of Granada was also one of the pioneers and early supporters of the Programme in the late 1980s.

It was on Thursday 22nd March that the 550 ESNers descended on this historic and beautiful Andalusian city from all corners of Europe. The event began with a glamorous opening ceremony at the Isabel la Catolica Theatre where there were presentations from Bea Pérez-Artacho (Head of Organising Committee), Tania Berman (President of ESN), OAPEE (Spanish National Agency) and the Mayor of Granada. The event also attracted media attention with both film crews and journalists present to cover the event. The Thursday programme was then concluded by the famous ESN flag parade, an extravaganza of colour, flags and noise that snaked through the cobbled streets of Granada letting the local residents know that ESN had arrived.

The event got into full-swing on Friday with the Infomarket held at the Faculty of Sciences. This year’s fair was entitled ‘Education, Mobility and Employment’ and the aim was to show ESNers and the local students not just the study opportunities but also employment opportunities offered by a number of partners and companies such as EF Education First, New Yorker and Vodafone to name but a few. Also, to add to the Infomarket experience there was a wide variety of workshops happening throughout the day, offering different training opportunities to interested ESNers. Topics included: negotiation techniques, building successful cooperation, leadership and management and many, many more. Then in the evening all the participants headed to the plenary sessions for four hours of intensity, tension and nervousness with the presentations of the International Board candidates and numerous questions coming from the ESNers who would elect them on Sunday. And the evening was closed by a fantastic video produced by New Yorker to announce the start of the cooperation with ESN, so keep a look at the Facebook page for the video.

Saturday was a 12 hour day of plenary sessions with many important topics about ESN and the functioning of the network taking place. The International Board presented their achievements of the year and their success at implementing their current action plan. Also, the new long-term-strategy of ESN was presented to give the network a direction and focus for the next three years. Also, to ensure there is a sturdy to base to build such things on the proposals for the revised statutes and standing orders were presented to the AGM before the Sunday voting round would take place. Additionally, all of the candidates for events such as Annual General Meeting (AGM) 2013, Council of National Delegates (CND) 2012 and the remaining Regional Platforms presented themselves in a bid to win over the audience and convince them that their city and section would be the best to host an ESN event.

Then on the final day of the event, all participants arrived at the plenary session with a sense of anxiety and anticipation in the knowledge that the day of voting and deciding the future of the network, the next IB and the next AGM were upon us. To start off Damien presented the financial report of ESN and the budget for the upcoming year. Then, the statutes and standing orders were voted and most of the changes were approved, with the longest proposal in ESN’s voting history being approved. Following this we had the elections for many important events and we are proud to announce that the AGM 2013 will be organised by ESN Maribor, Slovenia. In addition, the next Council of National Delegates meeting was chosen to take place in Örebro, Sweden. Last of all came the moment everyone was waiting for, the Board elections and we are happy to welcome the new Board for 2012-2013 that was chosen and will take office the 15th of July:

•     President - Emanuel Alfranseder (ESN Lund, Sweden)
•     Vice President - Katharina Ma (ESN Uni Wien, Austria)
•     Treasurer - Mario Alarcón (ESN UCLM, Spain)
•     Communication Manager -Juan Colino  (ESN Valladolid, Spain)
•     Web Project Administrator - Fabian Bircher (ESN EPF Lausanne, Switzerland)

After the drama and excitement of the votes and elections everyone had the chance to relax and celebrate the end of the event at the Gala Dinner organized at the 5* Nazaries Hotel. Participants were treated to a three course meal in glamorous surroundings. Following after the dinner, the STAR Awards were presented for the various categories and the winners were:

•     STARlight- ESN UJ Krakow, Poland
•     STARter- ESN Zagreb, Croatia
•     STARproject- ESN VMU Kaunas, Lithuania
•     webSTAR- ESN UKSW Warsaw, Poland
•     logoSTAR- ESN Padova, Italy
•     movieSTAR- ESN AUT Thessaloniki, Greece
•     STARland- ESN Greece

As the STAR Awards ended, the participants had the chance to enjoy their last night together and then think about their departure for home on Monday. And, perhaps most importantly, they could start thinking about their travel plans for AGM Maribor 2013.