The new year is here, all of us survived the apocalypse and most of us are already recovered from NYE celebrations. Now the time has come to introduce you the first Section in the Spotlight for year 2013: section ESC VŠB-TUO. Located in northeast of Czech Republic, this section is the younger one of the 2 in the city of Ostrava, which is the 3rd biggest city in CZ and the home of notoriously famous Stodolni Street, biggest party avenue in Central Europe.
Established in 2010 after the section's first ever future President returned from Erasmus in Finland and realised that local students speak almost NO English!!! To change that, he came up with an idea of FILLUP- Free& Fun International Language Lesson Unity Program and started running it together with 5 other people that later all together established the section which joined ESN in 2011.
ESC VSB-TUO has 15 active members. In order for everyone to be involved from the very beginning in section work, they developed a „Two-Way Motivation“ system. This allows newbies to have enough space for creativity, take part in National Events so they get an instant feeling of being part of the section. In return they provide lots of new creative ideas, different points of view and general optimism about anything that’s happening. Supporting that, a new structure where all the Board members have a group of newbies assigned to transmit their knowledge directly to them & possibly find a successor amongst them as Board mandate is strictly 1 year.
FILLUP remains the most popular of section activities since the very beginning. Each week, one nation prepares presentation of its culture, they often bring traditional food and drinks, they make fun of stereotypes, prepare games, just whatever they find interesting. This is really intense cooperation with section. Erasmus students take it really seriously and always celebrate whole-heartedly if they win “The best FILLUP of the semester”. But it goes further than that! The idea of FILLUP is about to be introduced to high schools. It has 3 stages:
- in the 1st stage a similar activity to FILLUP is introduced to the high school throughout the semester
- in the 2nd stage, those who enjoyed the 1st stage attend a summer camp where they get trained to become FILLUP coordinators in their high schools
- the 3rd stage is similar to the 1st but this time with a coordinator in charge from specific high schools
The idea is to show young students that learning languages can be fun & to demonstrate what opportunities it opens for them. Eventually it might grow to be a national ESN Project as well.
All the section events fit in the “Recovery Plan for Campus” which basically means making at least 1 live event per week aimed at exchanges promotion, integration & language practice of both local and Erasmus students. The scope of events is very broad- from FILLUP and Free Hugs Days or Hot Wine selling in front of dormitory to Dog Walks, Café Lingea and various SE events, like Responsible Parties (very popular in CZ) or City Race. The section took part in Movember, too. But the most notable event was the 25th Erasmus Anniversary Celebration, when ESC VSB-TUO broke the Czech national record in non-stop trampoline-jumping… INCREDIBLE 25 hours and more than 400 people participated!!! Many of these events were done in co-operation with other student organizations in Ostrava, too. ESC VSB-TUO also regularly appears on the university radio & recently got a space in private local TV to do whatever they want with it.
As from 2013, a separate training program together with university will start, aimed at developing the soft skills of section members. Until now there has been plenty of team-building events, workshops & other member-oriented events. Even though ESC VSB-TUO is a young section, they already managed to host a big National Platform and did not skip a single national or international ESN event since they joined. Recently their former President (who is also EduK8 Trainer) got elected President of ESN CZ.
All in all ESC VSB-TUO is a young, dynamic section full of enthusiastic people with a great deal of experience who always aim higher than they currently are and this is what makes them move forward so fast… THINKING BIG!!!
