International Board Diary November

Dear ESNers,
We welcome you back to the second International Board report after receiving great feedback from our first outing.  Without wanting to repeat the words of October,  November has of course lived up to the expectations of being hectic and busy with a whirlwind of meetings, events, deadlines and interesting developments in the network that we will try to tell you about below.

With SWEP finishing, CEP and NEP were already looming on the horizon, so the ESN office fell relatively silent whilst Damien and Josefin joined the CEP countries for a great event in Cracow and Fabian and Tania were in Odense for NEP. Both events were a great success with over 200 ESNers attending for series of workshops, trainings and packed social programmes.

Following the RPs, the first NBM of the year took place in the Emerald Isle in the city of Dublin. The first international event in Ireland was a great opportunity for ESN Ireland to show how they are developing and strengthening the position in ESN. Tania and Katja joined National Boards from 16  countries to engage in a variety of workshops and discussions about topics ranging from education and mobility, NB cooperation to partnerships for the network. Furthermore, Leo attended the Spanish NP in Valencia and had a chance to meet with the local members.

Whereas at the same time as the meeting in Dublin was concluding, 100 ESN members from across Europe were arriving in Brussels for the final PRIME conference which took place at Madou Tower. This dissemination event held at the European Commission was the culmination of 12 months of work from the project coordinator Justyna Pisera (and her team) who we would like to thank for her work and contribution. Many key topics were discussed by a panel of experts related to mobility, credit recognition and the academic value of Erasmus.  In addition, the event brought many ESNers in closer contact with ESN International and tours of the new ESN house attracted over 50 visitors.

Continuing the Board’s commitment to engaging with national and local levels of ESN, Josefin jetted off to Czech Republic to attend their ‘army themed’ National Platform’ whilst Katja and Fabian went to the SEEP in Istanbul. Also, Tania had the opportunity to attend the TEMPUS UMEI meeting in Santiago de Compostela, where ESN is a partner in a project which aims to promote mobility opportunities between Europe and the Maghreb countries.

Whilst back in the office, ESN signed its second major international partnership with 9flats, a private accommodation rental company that offers a wide range of benefits and free vouchers for mobile ESNers and exchange students. With many exciting developments regarding partnerships, we hope to have many more announcements in December and January about new partners that will offer more services to the network. Also, to further support the growing number of communication and marketing tasks we welcomed Magda Porazinska as an intern and she is the newest addition to the ever-growing ESN office workforce.

A fantastic piece of news that came in November was that ESN won the EESC Civil Society prize for the SocialErasmus project that we have been running since 2008. It was wonderful for ESN to have such recognition for its work on the European level, and we also won a prize of 20,000€!!! To recognise this award, for one day the ESN office was visited by a film crew to record the work of the Board in their daily activities. You can see the final product here.

Concurrently, the final touches were being put to the Jean Monnet grant application by everyone in the office. This administrative grant is vital to sustaining the work of ESN in Brussels and we wish to thank all the sections for their help in sharing the activities they do to be included in the application. We will let you know the result in a few months…
In the final week of this action-packed month, the Board also managed to squeeze in the last RP of the year, the Western European Platform in Liege, Belgium where Katja and Tania were in attendance. After a few days rest (a.k.a working in the office) after the event, it was time to go again and thus the entire team set off for the beautiful city of Siena, Italy for the CND, the second most important event in the ESN year. You can find out more about the meeting (and the lovely Tuscan food and wine in the December edition of the Board report)

Greetings from the International Board

Written by Leo Smith