ESN Lithuania in cooperation with “Invest Lithuania” presents a new project -“Multilingual Lithuania”. The main goal of this project is to give Lithuanians an opportunity to learn foreign languages for free, give a chance to know new culture and make friends here in Lithuania and abroad.

Foreign students will become language teachers and have their lessons each week at university. Lessons conducted by native speakers will start from the 25th of February and last 2,5 months.

Now we have over 30 participants from 15 different countries all over the world who accepted a challenge to become a teacher.

On 14th of February in Vilnius at ISM (University of Management and Economics) project participants will have a seminar where they discuss each together about language teaching strategies and methods. Visiting lecturer will share experience and give some advices for efficient lessons.

Information about timetables you will find next week on your university ESN FB page or contact us: [email protected]

Social Erasmus with the project Erasmus in Schools invites to share some joy between the schools and pupils of Lithuania. All what do you need - the help of international students. Steps to follow:

1. Kindly ask international students to bring 2-3 postcards from his homeland. Few things should be mentioned on them:

• name of the country; 

• few phrases in the language of the cards' holder;

• few sentences about first impression of Lithuania (in English);

• phrase in Lithuanian (written with a help of a mentor);

• and everything else you want to share with pupils!

2. After collecting the postcards, ESNers will divide postcards in equal parts and will send them to the selected schools of Lithuania, where postcards will be exposed.

Let the International winds take over the schools of Lithuania!

During WWII in Ponar near Vilnius more than 70 000 Vilnius Jews were massacred and buried in mass graves. In this way Vilnius, Jerusalem of the North, lost almost the entire Jewish population. In 1943 an 11 year old kid Tamir won a ghetto song contest with his song 'Shtiler Shtiler', known as 'Ponar Lullaby', he devoted to the new graves in Ponar after the massacre.

For the purpose of this project students of different European countries will be invited to an event in Vilnius called 'Ponar Lullaby'. 8 groups consisting of 50 persons will be formed between December 2012 and April 2013 (on Sundays). They will spend a day in a former ghetto - a typical day of a Vilnius Jew. The aim of the project is to trigger a discussion among young people of different nationalities who are not familiar with neither the history of Jewish people, neither the Holocaust, about the lessons of the past and values of democracy in Europe and make them eager to build the future of democratic Europe.

More information about the project can be found here.

Just before Christmas, when the first snow has covered streets of Kaunas ESN KTU (Erasmus Student Network Kaunas University of Technology) team with international and Erasmus students went to Vilijampole Social Care Home. Vilijampole Social Care Home takes care of the young people which have physical and/or mental problems. With warm hearts, energy and the presents donated by students for this event, everybody went to visit the youth with special needs.

Accidentally or not the chosen day was magical 2012 12 12. Due to the magic number or the warmth of students’ hearts – that afternoon there were a lot of smiling faces.  Comfortably sitting on the carpet, youngsters with foreign students created a Christmas city. While coloring details of the Christmas city everybody forgot all the problems and enjoyed the time together. It was a surprise to see how easily children found connection with the foreign students despite the language barrier.  When the painting was finished everybody had a chance to enjoy the sounds of guitars which accompanied the famous song for children ‘Naktelės žiedai’. Some children from Vilijampole Social Care Home also showed their singing and dancing skills.

The children were especially happy about the Santa Claus Cat (thanks to KTU Career center) which umused the kids the whole afternood and finally awarded them everyone with presents. The greatest present - special medical hygiene items - bought with the donated money, went for the kids with difficult health problems.

Eventually, students from Azerbaijan and their traditional dance crowned the afternoon. This event was an unforgettable experience for the international students and the ESN team. It was a great reminder to pay attention to the small things and people who surround us and make our lives worth living. Moreover, students had a chance to meet another foreign people who have volunteered in Vilijampole Social Care Home before.

ESN team wants to say a huge thanks for Vilijampole Social Care Home personnel who warmly welcomed us and  everybody who participed and spared time and energy to create the biggest magic in the world – a smile!

Thank you for all the participants who sent “Letter for ERASMUS exchange student in Lithuania“!

The most original were students from Klaipėdos siuvimo ir paslaugų verslo mokykla (3KP 3 gr ir 3D 6 gr., teacher - Irina Basalyga); they will get our special prize :)

Other prizes go to:

Justina Miliūtė - Seirijai Antanas Žmuidzinavičius gymnasium

Mažvydas Juščius - Vilniaus rajono Paberžės „Verdenės“ secondary school

Indrė Kaminckaitė - Neveronys Secondary School

Congratulations!

Dėl padėkų ir prizų atsiėmimo prašome kreiptis į „Lietuvos vaikų ir jaunimo centro“
projektų koordinatorę Jolantą Markevičienę ( tel: +370 5 272 53 19, e-mail: [email protected]). 

ESN Lithuania team

For 11-18 of November North-South Centre of the Council of Europe organizes “Global Education Week”.

This year Erasmus Student Network of Lithuania also joins this event providing the society information about the Erasmus exchange possibilities and its’ importance to the development of the global citizenship.

Here you can find short movie how ERASMUS, and exchange programs at all, can be benefitial for the person, local society and all the world! ;)

Attention: exchange students did a great job - explained everything in Lithuanian!!!

Thanks for all participants for educating our society!

Increase funding by 70% for the new Erasmus program!

ESN together with AEGEE and ESU invites you to support the idea to rise the funding for the following Erasmus program which will change current Erasmus program from 2014.

Needless to say that ESN believes that this increase is justified and we want to give more people the chance to be mobile and have the amazing experience that so many of us have already enjoyed.

How can You help?

Sign the petition

We need to get one million signatures from all European Union countries. So please promote this to all your international students, sign it yourself and make everyone you know sign it. What is more, the General Affairs Council is meeting on Tuesday, November 20 and the budget is discussed. We need to send a strong signal until then and get as many signatures as possible.

The budget of the new EU programme and the budget are only negotiated every seven years. So now is our chance to stand up for mobility and exchange. There will not come an equally good one any time soon.

So what do we plan to do?

There are two main things. To reach those we have joined forces with the other two big student organisations in Europe, AEGEE and ESU. Our two main goals are:

• To secure the funding of ESN International via operational support (currently through the Jean Monnet grant we have been receiving the past years);

• To secure the budget increase for mobility programmes such as the Erasmus programme.

Support the future of Erasmus and Exchange - Sign Fraternité 2020.

Attachment Files: 

Lithuanian pupils and students & ERASMUS exchange students in Lithuania will say loud that ERASMUS helps to go towards one world idea!

For 11-18 of November North-South Centre of the Council of Europe organizes “Global Education Week”. During this week Lithuanian students and teachers will be encouraged to find out their educational activities, which would make a great impact to their global citizenship.

This year Erasmus Student Network of Lithuania also joins this event providing the society information about the Erasmus exchange possibilities and its’ importance to the development of the global citizenship.

10 ESN departments in Lithuania are inviting all the pupils to participate in the essay contest: 

A LETTER FOR ERASMUS EXCHANGE STUDENT IN LITHUANIA.

More information you can find in ERASMUS LETTERS.

Every semester ESN VGTU in cooperation with International Relations Office not only takes care of hundreds of foreign students from more than twenty countries, organizes events, trips, social projects but also tries to show the variety of cultures to other VGTU students. It is already three weeks since the Korean language course is being held at the VGTU central building every week on Tuesdays. Everyone who has interest in this country, their culture or language specifics, is invited. In order to share all this with people, ESN VGTU asked the member of this organization and the lover of Korean culture Julius Baradinskas to organize this event. Students from South Korea gladly welcomed this idea and were happy about people being interested in their culture.

According to the organizer, the first lecture was more like an experiment, since it wasn‘t  expected to get so much interest. However, attendants expressed the desire to continue learning Korean language. The lectures were attended not only by Lithuanians but also by foreign students – Tajiks, Germans, Turks, Czechs as well as Koreans from VU and ISM universities. In the first lecture only around twenty people has participated, whereas in the third one, the classroom was overfilled.

At the beginning attendants were taught simple Korean words such as hello or thank you, while later they were learning the specifics of spelling, reading and pronunciation. When  Koreans ask students to read the word written on the board, many hands rise. Apart from the language specifics, Korean students have introduced Korean history, famous places, culture as well as the meaning of South Korea flag.  Students were even asked to paint the flag and the best ones were awarded with souvenirs from South Korea.  Besides that, Koreans have shown the most popular TV drama in their country as well as their own filmed video clip with a funny situation. According to students, the most memorable moment so far was national anthem of South Korea that has been sung by Myounghun Lee.

The number of people interested in these lectures is increasing so ESN VGTU is continuing this project. Everyone who would like to join us is invited to VGTU central building every Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the room 624. For more information about ESN VGTU check us on Facebook.

Vaida Tracevičiūtė, ESN VGTU

Mykolas Romeris University community members were amazed by Erasmus students’ talents already for the fifth time. On Friday evening, 11th of November was held one of the most popular events among students – Erasmus Got Talent, which have already become traditional.

The event has expanded this semester – many talented people gathered to share their creativity and originality not only fromMykolas Romeris University, but also from Vilnius Universityand European Humanitarian University.

University also had an honour to be visited by schoolchildren from Vilnius region Pagiriai gymnasium and Utena Dauniškis gymnasium, who equally competed with university students to win the prize. The audience was astonished by the energy and courage they showed.

Strict but fair jury consisted of mentors dressed as Britney Spears (Justina Kozlovska), Bruno Mars(Robertas Šumskis) and Lady Gaga (Viktorija Kašlėjūtė) had to do the most difficult work – make a decision who are worthiest to win.

Although it wasn’t easy to choose from so many good dancers, singers and musicians, the jury came to a conclusion that in category of originality The Erasmus Boys made the most memorable performance. 4 guys showed the audience what Erasmus studies are really about while using exclusive dance moves.

Pagiriai gymnasium schoolchildren didn’t bother just to be average as well – they won prize for the best dance.

Svetlana Jaraud was awarded for Lithuanian Patriotism. Audience was stunned by the French girl who came up on the stage carrying huge Lithuanian flag and sang Trys milijonai by heart.

Andrea Amadeo and Ineta Kairytė set the dance floor on fire with their performance, considered by jury as the most romantic. Everyone enjoyed their dance divided into three parts: unprofessional tango, pop dance and Lithuanian national dance. According to lovely couple, this mixture of Italian and Lithuanian is a symbol of world’s integration.

Thibaut Noel gave everyone a warm overwhelming feeling with an outstanding guitar loop jam he composed few months ago and played it in front of people for the first time. He won not only in category of public choice but also earned the jury’s sympathy which gave him the first prize. As Thibaut said, Erasmus Got Talent definitely completes its goal: enjoying and having fun between Erasmus students, mentors and officials from MRU together. He claims that this night will definitely be a good memory from Lithuania.

Mykolas Romeris University International Exchange Unit together with ESN MRU Vilnius, that organized the event, are very proud they had an opportunity to gather so many talented people together and believe that such a nice tradition will continue.

Milda Porutytė, ESN MRU Vilnius

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