National

On 10th January Vilnius sections of ESN Lithuania wellcomed all ERASMUS students by organizing them a huge Welcome party. According to organizators, there should have been around 450 ERASMUS students from Vilnius, Vilnius Gediminas Technical and  Mykolas Romeris universities, International School of Business and Law as well as mentors and their friends. The party took place in Pramogų Bankas, Vilnius.

The topic of the event was BLING BLING, so girls had to wear cocktail dresses while guys were in their suits and shirts. Despite the bad weather and Lithuanian cold, there were lots of people who prepared and shined all night long. The party lasted until 6 am.

This welcome party was one of the first events organized by several sections of ESN in Vilnius. After success like this there will certainly be more unforgettable events organized so follow the news!

This weekend National Platform of ESN Lithuania was organized in Vilnius for the last time these years and for the first time of a new Board, working from the 1st of October. 29 presentations, hours of discussions, new ideas and experiences for sharing surounded by Christmas decorations and music. 

Saturday's program included presentations from various international events as PRIME in Brussels, CEP Krakow,NBM Dublin and CND Siena. The latter event offered to rank sections from being regular to reaching level of good, successful or perfect section. Reflections of NBM Dublin have informed everyone about new ERASMUS program, which will be offered from 2012 with hard working ESN team on its side again. Presentation of CEP Krakow gave all the NP participants some thoughts about possible future cooperation with ESN Poland.

After covering these topics and coffee break National Platform could move forward and discuss about such important issues as ESN Lithuania Budget, ESN cards and future of ESN VPU, which candidacy was rejected after voting of 10 other ESN Lithuania's sections. 

Besides all discussions and reviews all 47 participators of the event had an opportunity to improveESN communication tools using skills, including reminder of  a little bit forgotten ESN Galaxy or ESN Lithuania InfoCentre, during the workshop organized by Ieva Vezbergaitė, ESN Lithuania NR. Furthermore, all participators were introduced to new ESN Lithuania's public relations tools as YouTube channel, Facebook and Twitter profiles or separate websites for every single ESN Lithuania section.

Time of the first NP's day has run out with presentations of SeaBattle'11 Autumn and Exchange Days'11 with desicion being made to continue this event in coming years, making no more mistakes and going only further.

Sunday has offered an informative program with presentations of sections, which can be already found in ESN Lithuania InfoCentre, and voting round, which has changed a lot. From now on ESN Lithuania:

• is no more in partnership with S-Travellers;

• in a following NP there will include 5 places for ESN Alumni;

• has new ESN Lithuania's Human Resources Coordinator - Roman Šarpanov;

• Cihan Keskin has bacame ESN Lithuania's IT Coordinator;

• will organize next National Platform in Šiauliai with help of ESN ŠU section.

We thank everyone for active participation, ESN ISLB for organization and hope to see you soon with even more ideas, smiles and experiences to share!

 Photos can be found HERE.

ESN Lithuania and Student Travellers present:

EXCHANGE DAYS 2011 DRUSKININKAI. OVER 100 INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS FROM ALL LITHUANIA!

Preliminary programme

Saturday (26 November 2011)

Free bus shuttle from Vilnius and Kaunas
Arrival at Druskininkai in the morning
Registration for the event. Souvenirs. Check in the hotel.
Free time in Druskininkai with the group leader (mentor). City tour with possibility to taste mineral water.
Parade for all international students. Be ready to represent your university and your nationality! Bring your country attributes, flags and colors!
Welcome from ESN Lithuania. Meeting with the representatives of Druskininkai town and Lithuanian National Agency – Educational Exchange Support Foundation. Free time.
Dinner
Night clubbing: International Party    

Sunday (27 November 20101

Breakfast. Check out from the hotel.
Aqua park. Don’t forget to bring towel and your swimming suit
Free time
Departure home

Registration and payments have to be done before 6 November, 2011 via your own university ESN section. Please see sections list here.

If your university/college does not belong to ESN. Register at [email protected] , email Subject “Exchange days 2011 registration” by providing:
First and Last name, Date of Birth, Nationality, Sex, Mobile number, email, your university/college name

By registering you agree with Terms&Conditions

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!

Even after more than a week, participants of the ESN Summer Camp, which was held on the 11-15 August, are sharing their positive experience and photos on social networks. That shows the Summer Camp was really successful and memorable! ESN members are therefore grateful for organizers from ESN Lithuania and for KTU, VDU and KK as these universities supported the event and in this way contributed to a great success.

There were totally 59 ESN members from Italy, Spain, France, Greece, Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia, Turkey, Sweden, Germany and Lithuania. As the Camp was based on team building, both lectures and games were organized. Organizers invited Nijolė Petkevičiūtė from VDU and professional trainer Andrius Jarašiūnas to conduct some lectures. During the trainings, it was concentrated on the personality, team building and the problems related to this. Participants were learning to cope with their fairs, work together etc. Funny team building games were played as well.

For sure, various attractions also help to build a team, so organizers thought about this and prepared some nice surprises. Participants could use sauna, hot water tub, drive water bikes, play basketball or valleyball. Eurodinner was organized too. Campers were extremely happy to have the water fight as well as night orientation game. For some of the participants it was completely new experience. After the busy day, it was possible also to spend the evening nicely sitting by the fire place.

Summer Camp by ESN Lithuania was organized also in 2010, but at that time only Lithuanian members of ESN could participate. So, this year the conception of the event became broader as it became international. With lots of positive experience, fun memories, bigger motivation to work further on for ESN, participants promised to come back to Lithuania once again. Organizers are also happy about the success, so ESN Lithuania is seriously thinking to continue this nice tradition of having Summer Camp for ESN members.

ESN Lithuania holds a few National Platforms (NP) each year. The first NP in the year of 2011 was held on 26-27th February, organized by ESN VGTU. This NP was unusual in the sense that it took two days. During these two days, most important questions were discussed, some workshops held and so on. According to rules, each section sent five representatives. You weren't one of them and didn't participate in last NP? No problem, here you can find a short description what was going on;)

- Presentation CND Milano. The event (Council of National Delegates) took place on 9-13th December, 2010 in Milano, Italy. It was organized by ESN Statale. Generally, it is considered to be the second most important event in ESN. This time ESN Lithuania was represented by three board members: Orinta, Gintarė and Viktorija. Topics which were dealt with: IT updates, History Book, Erasmus companies, fake sections, Section Questionnaire, projects such as ESN Survey, Exchangability, ESN Eduk8, Social Erasmus and PRIME 2010.

 - Presentation CNR, which was held in Eskisehir, Turkey on 10-14th February, 2011. Long Term Communication Strategy was presented. It is planned to establish local representatives, who would deal with information on national level and would make reports. ESN Star Awards discussed: all sections have possibility to take part in this contest and the winners will be announced during AGM Budapest.

- Presentation AGM Budapest. (AGM stands for Annual General Meeting) It is coming event, which will be held on 31 March - 4 April, 2011. Generally it is the biggest event of ESN when around 500 members of ESN gather together to decide on the most important questions of our organization.

- Presentiation Social Erasmus. You can find more information about it under the title "Projects".

- Presentation Responsible Party. The aim of such a party is to prompt young people party with the sense of responsibility, having in mind the negative effect of alcohol.

- Presentation EYV 2011. EYV - European Year of Volunteering. During the tour around Europe, 27 countries will be visited. Information market will also be held in Vilnius on 20-26 June, 2011.

- Presenting international initiative "Ride for Your Rights". RIDE FOR YOUR RIGHTS - IT'S TIME TO (EX)CHANGE YOUR LIFE is an European project powered and initiated by Campus Europae, in collaboration with ESN. Participants will bike from Novi Sad (Serbia) to Saint Petersburg (Russia) during this summer (2011) for claiming their rights as European students, aiming at better conditions for mobility programs.

- Discussing general questions of running ESN: ESN cards, Erasmus companies, issuing ESN Lithuania statute, not active members, sections' reports. It was decided to have regular reports of each section. It should be made four times a year, three weeks before NP.

- Discussion Regional Platforms. ESN Lithuania decided to move from NEP (Northern Europe Platform) to CEP (Central Europe Platform).

- New sections! It was decided to accept University of Klaipėda together with Klaipeda State College as ESN KUK section. International School of Law and Business accepted as a new section with the name of ESN TTVAM. It was also decided to give ISM the status of section-candidate. That means that during next NP it will be decided about further cooperation with this university and for now it needs to go through trial period (with the help of ESN MRU as patron section).

- Presentation GO PUBLIC. Sections presented their best events, ideas in order to promote their activities and to win special title for the section. Read more about presentations and the winners in the article "GO PUBLIC has the winners!"

 - Presentation "Travelling Social Cuisine" which will take place in Kėdainiai on 26th March.

- Presentation Summer Camp 2011. It is planned to organized it on 12-15th August in Alaušas valley. More information coming later.