ESN KUK

On 12th of March, Klaipėda University hosted awards of student public activities "Auksinė burė". 24 nominees competed in 7 categories: best organization, best event, best project, best students' initiative, best discovery, best volunteer and best example.

This year our beloved section from the seaside ESN KUK was nominated and awarded. National "Multilingual Lithuania" project have won in the category of BEST PROJECT of the year. Congratulations!

Multilingual Lithuania is a voluntary social-educational native language teaching project launched for Lithuanians. In cooperation with Invest Lithuania ESN KUK together with other sections of ESN Lithuania organizes this project every semester in order to encourage Lithuanians to study and learn foreign languages. Lessons are free for everyone and conducted by native language speakers - international students, who are eager to teach their own languages.

National Platform of ESN Lithuania which has started exactly one week ago gathered more than 80 participants for the first time in the history of the country. ESN KuK faced a challenge to welcome 13 delegations of the sections, ESN LT Alumni team, NB, special guests from ESN Italy and even former ESN International president Emanuel Alfranseder. “Coming back to Klaipeda 2 years after the last NP organized there, helps to understand how far ESN Lithuania did go and what a great family it did become when all NP used to fill only half of the Aula back then and nowadays even additional chairs are used” says one of the participants.

Agenda also can be called richer than it has ever been. Feedback from various international events as CEP Košice, CNR Florence, SECM Prague, NBM Timisoara and the recent one CND Lodz was given. ESN Lithuania has beaten its own records having more than 20 delegates in international ESN events during the last quarter. Presentations about national and international ESN projects were given, work of international ESN Committees was presented, ESN ways of communication of various levels were covered. ESN Italy shared experience of their work while Emanuel presented specifics of working in international level of ESN. Small sessions and workshops were organized for better implementation of the knowledge and developing of some new ideas. Rumor has it that Responsible Party may have its new era coming!

While waiting for rumors to become official announcements it is worth to appreciate real changes which were made. 11th section of ESN Lithuania was approved under the name of ESN SMK. Vilnius Academy of Arts became second candidate section and from now on holds ESN VDA name. Few more changes concerning the names of NB positions were made. Public Relations Officer from now on is called Communication Manager and Projects Coordinator was changed to Projects&Events Coordinator. Newly old candidate for the latter position was reelected: NP was greeting Sandra Rimavičiūtė for the second term. Without all of that the one and the only ESN LT mascot was finally presented – Gilius LTU!

National Platform No. 17 was closed in the evening of December 15th with many wishes for Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Hopefully holidays will be useful and inspiring break before the new grand season which will definitely bring many changes. Are you interested how we are going to look like in one year? It depends only on us, so let’s do our best.

Usually it takes a long time to get there. Once you do that, there is never enough: of ESN, of people you meet and spirit you feel. Official description tells you that it is the main decision-making body of ESN International. Well, it is. And it is much more at the same time: future cooperations, knowledge transfer, gathering information, sharing experiences, developing ideas, creating personal long-lasting relations, simply having fun and believing in ideas of the network. 

The idea of AGM is to gather together around 600 current and former members of ESN from international, national and local levels. 36 countries – numbers only prove how broad our organization is. And while wearing different colors and realizing slightly different projects we manage to keep unity in diversity. 

ESN Lithuania also was a part of it – 12 delegates representing 9 sections of ESN Lithuania together with NB delegates and NR in front of. Great purple cloud took over the city of Maribor for 4 days starting from 11th continuing to 14th of April. 

Thursday, 11th of April

While our NR Simona Patašiūtė was catching a breath after intensive and productive pre-CNR delegation of Lithuania was slowly starting to appear from different corners of Europe. The fastest ones were invited to explore Maribor – former European Capital of Culture 2012 during guided sightseeing tours, which invited to share “Brez objemov” or “Free Hugs” with the citizens. Surprised, smiling faces and a bit scared ones from too high dose of Love, but after all – socially aware ESN greeting for the city, which hosted the biggest event of the network. 

Opening ceremony of the event was soon to come so after making few more circles in the city time for preparations to meet Mr. President of Slovenia Borut Pahor. After his speech even more greetings followed by ESN AISLB president Emanuel Alfranseder, partnerts of the network and even Androulla Vassiliou, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth. Ceremony was opened and closed by Slovenian singer performing anthem of ESN SB – “Don’t You Worry Child”.

Afterwards delegations were invited to enjoy traditional Slovenian dinner together with songs and dances followed by Responsible Party where RP ambassadors were taking a great care of ESNers while providing them water and other goods.

Friday, 12th of April

From 7am in the morning participants were invited to enjoy the breakfast and so prepare for the following sessions when procedures of AGM were presented, chairs were elected, agenda approved and presentations of the candidates for 2013-2014 IB were heard. 

Later the action was moved to the Technical Faculties, where local Slovenian people together with the members of ESN were invited to participate in the Uni-market which has lasted for 3 hours and has invited to get to know more than 300 universities across entire Europe. 

After the market was finished ESNers were invited to attend the variety of workshops starting with the diplomacy lessons taught by Slovenian Foreign Affairs Minister ending up with project management and team building. Impressions and lessons which were learnt were shared during the National Platforms, which invited to talk about candidates for the IB, about AGM itself and to prepare for the loud and colorful flag-parade. 

Parade which took for more than few hours and was captured by various media representatives ended up in Festival Hall Lent where the Eurodinner took place. Crazy night with loud music, various goods from different countries of the world leaded to the one of the most important days of AGM.

Saturday, 13th of April

The 3rd day of AGM invited to the sessions where the most important decisions were made. OCs for the future international events were elected:

• AGM Milano 2014;
• CEP Košice 2014;
• CND Lodz 2014.

Later on budgets were discussed and presentation about the work done by IB 2012-2013 was given. As well as standing orders were changed with the biggest innovation – bringing the chairing team to the CNR meetings, which from now one will be made of CNR Administrator, Secretary and Technical Assistant. 

44Changes for the Visual Identity Manual were also introduced with a suggestion to allow the use of ESN logo in full solid ESN Colors, including ESN Pink/Cyan/Orange/Green/Dark Blue. The next day proposal was approved by AGM, so from now on we have even more colorful and flexible visual identity of the network! 

AGM was continued by presentation of the Board Action Plan for 2013 – 2014 with concrete actions how to improve the structure, budget, work of secretariat and strengthen up ESN Brand. Promotion of the mobility, concentration on the projects as ESNSurvey, PRIME, Erasmus Impact Study will remain. Will be working on strengthening up the Eduk8, Alumni network, working with facilitation of international jobs, traineeships and volunteer opportunities for ESN members.

During the rest of the day international ESN projects were presented: ESNWiki, Responsible Party, where ESN Lithuania takes the first place by the number of RP parties organized! Time for the session was coming to an end so lots of discussion points were delayed to the coming day. 

UV Youngle Party followed afterwards, where with the help with OC, IB and NewYorker everyone was dressed the same – T-shirts of ESN, which later on were covered by the layers of ultraviolet sensitive paints. 

Sunday, 14th of April

New day, new challenges and huge amounts of information! Projects as ESN Satellite was presented with having a first look to the new version of it and promise for it soon to come. ESN Survey was analyzed, recent results of Eduk8 were presented continuing with the presentation with the rest of projects as Erasmus in Schools as a Flagship Project for this year, Social Erasmus as the latter Flagship Project of ESN, Section Quality Development, Section Cooperation, ESN Galaxy, ESN Card, Ride for Your Rights, ExchangeAbility presentations. 

Reports of CNR, CND, Committees, Liaison Office and Network itself followed together with presentation of commercial, institutional partners.

Alumni were also invited to the stage to present their new work done during the recent year, attempts to gather all national Alumni coordinators to one place and to share their knowledge and possibilities between each other. More information about Alumni network might be found HERE. Also traditional Alumni grant was given. This time it was ESN Rijeka which was awarded by 500eu for the innovative trainings for ESN members of their section. 

Also that day IB for the next cadency was elected:

• President – Stefan Jahnke;

• Vice-president – Dominique Montagnese;

• Treasurer – Jonathan Jelves;

• Communication Manager – Robert Klimacki;

• Web Project Administrator – Salih Odabasi.

After the reports of the auditors and vote of AGM event was officially closed. Only Gala-prom was waiting for the participants.

Gala this year was different. The idea was to have a prom date like in the times of finishing high school. That was the reason why everyone that night came by two. High heels and ties, dresses and suits – that night we’ve proved  how different we can be – from dirty t-shirts to fancy look, from crazy parties to Social Erasmus. That’s what ESN is about.

15th of April

Then the sun started to appear in the morning of 15th AGM came to an end. Lots of goodbyes were told during the breakfast, many free hugs made to each other hoping to see each other again. Once more hundreds of people from different parts of Europe spread apart to work for the same ideas and values only through different projects and venues. Work for the local, national and international community. Spread responsible and socially aware ideas.

Every time we meet, something changes. In statutes, standing orders, VMI, but the wish to ESN your life always remains.

Pallomeri, dear members of ESN!

More photos HERE!

This week is important to ESN Lithuania not only because of a recently organized PRIME conference with many important representatives from various institutions, but also because of the changes in national level. On 24-25th Spetember the National Platform was held in Klaipėda. During the whole day many topics were covered and also the new positions were elected.

As we know the previous national board is finishing its work on the 1st October. Since then in our national board and other national positions we will have:

Ieva Vezbergaitė as our new ESN Lithuania National Representative. Some of you might already know her as she already was our NR for one year before and did lots of work to help ESN Lithuania to become what we are now. Congratulations to Ieva and a huge thanks goes to Orinta Movsesjan, the previous NR for the whole year work!

Gintarė Vaiginytė as our new ESN Lithuania President. Gintarė comes from ESN VGTU section and is known as an active participant in ESN Lithuania, introducing some valuable ideas. Congratulations to Gintarė and a huge thanks goes to Giedrė Gelšvartaitė, the previous President for the whole year work!

Sandra Baltkojytė as our new ESN Lithuania PR coordinator. Sandra is quite a new member  of ESN Lithuania, but already participated actively in ESN VMU section, so good luck for her to continue her work on the national level! And a huge thanks goes to Monika Lapėnaitė, the previous PR coordinator for the whole year work!

Julija Garšvaitė as our ESN Lithuania Project Coordinator. Julija was in this position already for one term, so hopefully she will continue her work successfully further on. Congratulations!

It needs to be mentioned that ESN Lithuania stiill hasn't filled the whole places of the board and other national positions. The preliminary date of the next NP is considered to be after a month and the event will be held in Vilnius (by ESN ISBL). So, we encourage all the sections to look for active and responsible candidates to the positions which are still open. These are:

NATIONAL BOARD: ESN Lithuania Vice-president, ESN Lithuania Treasurer.

OTHER NATIONAL POSITIONS: ESN Lithuania IT Coordinator, ESN Lithuania HR Coordinator.

To mention shortly these were other most important things during the NP:

From today we have ten sections in ESN Lithuania! ESN ISM has joined us, so we are congratulating them and wishing a successful work altogether! Welcome to our team!
The report of the year of previous National Board. You can find it in Info center.
Presenting Erasmus for Lithuania schools project, which is going to be held from the middle of September till 18th November.
among all, the various events were presented, possible partnerships discussed and the main problems raised. Altogether with trying to find solutions to the problems we were happy to see that ESN Lithuania is participating in many valuable projects and becoming more and more known both nationally and internationally. Thanks to all who contributed to this!