Klaipėda

It’s a wonderful time of the year. Easter holiday comes to our country and welcomes the spring! Playing Easter games and eating traditional dishes brings families together. But not all the people can share their joy and happiness with beloved ones. That’s why sections of ESN Lithuania together with SocialErasmus Coordinator decided to do a good deed and unite international students with the children and elders to celebrate it together. The sections visited children day centers, orphanages and elderly homes and spread the Easter spirit all over the place. They decorated eggs, played traditional games and even prepared musical performances. Let’s have a look what kind of activities some sections had during past two weeks.

On 24^th of March ESN KK have celebrated Easter in a very traditional way. They taught international students how to decorate Easter eggs in all kinds of different ways. After that they all together have visited elderly house and shared their countries Easter traditions with elders.

On 25^th of March ESN VMU together with international students went to Child Care Center and spent time with children by helping them to prepare for Easter. They played games and decorated Easter eggs as well. After the meeting VMU students shared their impressions - “We spent there unforgettable afternoon and brought Easter joy to the children!”

On 26^th of March ESN ISLB team together with international students went to Čižiūnai Orphanage and spent a memorable time with children. Students played games, balloon fight, and football match with their new little friends. The day was summed up with the Easter dinner where they presented musical performance.

On 27^th of March ESN KUK with Erasmus students went to a child day care centre. They were introduced with all children’s activities, decorated eggs, played games, learned several Lithuanian words and had an amazing time together.

On 30^th of March ESN VGTU organized a visit to one pension in Vilnius, where students learnt old traditions of painting eggs with wax and Easter games, as well. They were really kindly welcomed there by livers of the pension and even given some handmade presents. After the big job while decorating eggs, they had coffee and cake time and SURPRISINGLY, the barrier of language differences didn’t cause any discomfort. We also had the most beautiful egg election and the “Rolling eggs game”, which was really funny. 

 On 3^rd of April ESN LEU members and their exchange students together with ESN MRU Vilnius exchange students spent some time with children at the children’s day center. The children were happy to have visitors from all around the world.

All together international students and local communities built the bridges between different cultures and traditions. The ESN Lithuania team hopes that the warmth sections have shared with children and elders were appreciated and made them happier and that it was unforgettable experiences for international students as well.

Happy Easter everyone!  

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.

This year ESN Lithuania had an amazing SocialErasmus week. 10 sections representing all 4 ESN cities of Lithuania have joined the initiative. Even 15 activities were organized.

The first day was started with our second National event „Give a smile for children“. The idea was to collect white coins from Erasmus students (all March) and then buy something nice for children. We decided to visit children in different cities. So we did by we viting Pamūšio child care homes, Old Town Children Day Center, Children day care center,  „Vaikų ir Paauglių Socialinis Centras“. All those meetings during this day ware awesome. Students were happy and proved us, that they would love to come back. 

During next days we had events like visit in Lithuanian educational centre, two Erasmus fairytales in school, small things can make you happy – we were giving people sweets with words like „Smile, it‘s simple“, two visits in pet shelter, what makes you happy, two free hugs activities, change a cigarete – don‘t smoke better eat a chocolade, Erasmus forest – it‘s nice to plant trees by ourselves, visit in the horse farm, action "Have a Nice Day". SocialErasmus week was finished with the video „I love you, Mom“ from ESN VMU. Erasmus students said in their language „I love you, Mom“.

All those activities showed us that together we are power. SocialErasmus week was full of positive mood, smiles and lots of love and hugs. Thanks for all, who has participated in this week and just keep being social.

Written by National SocialErasmus Coordinator Ona Bumbulytė

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.

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!