National

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.

During the last weekend of September (28-29th) National Platform of ESN Lithuania took place under the roof of Vilnius University. More than 15 hours of discussions and decisions resulted in getting to know each other better, gaining experience and ideas from other sections since 9 of them were participating, together with ESN LT Alumni, our candidate section ESN SMK and ESN LEU, which has just applied for candidate status. New members, ideas and suggestions, negotiations and problems solving – 2 days full of ESN Lithuania policy making.

28th of September

On Saturday after sections from Kaunas, Šiauliai and Klaipėda have reached the capital and people from Vilnius have gathered together National Representative Simona Patašiūtė together with CT Vytenis Danyla have opened the Platform with motivating speeches and inspiration for every single ESNer in Lithuania. Afterwards CEP and CND were presented together with opportunities to join them and gather some international experience there. Later on some local experiences were shared with the entire network while ESN VGTU representatives gave a presentation about Summer Camp’13, organized already for the 3rd time in ESN Lithuania history and probably not for the last one.

During the rest of the morning NP was listening to different kinds of reports and presentations given by ESN LT Alumni network, which have even prepared awards for every section for their best project of the recent period. Tomas Tamulevičius has shared his experience in Eduk8 seminar Trainings 4 Trainers, which has happened more than a month ago in Romania and motivated him to apply for the HRC position in the NB. National project coordinator Sandra Rimavičiūtė has presented previous and made an introduction to the present ESN Sea Battle stating clear that it is still one of the most successful ESN projects ever, always sold out within first hours. One more successful project of ESN was presented by the guest of our NP – Xrisa Soulele from ESN Greece, who has presented us SocialErasmus and Erasmus in Schools initiative in her home country.

After the lunch all the rest of the time was dedicated for the reports of the sections and their activities of the recent quarter: welcoming weeks were presented along with mentors activities, which are playing the main role during the first days of exchange students in Lithuania. Presentations were followed by the open discussion initiated by the CT where sections shared their thoughts about the work done by the colleagues. After closing it together with the first day of NP everyone was invited to meet up in the city centre for non-formal activities.
 
29th of September

Day for the decision making has finally come. After listening to 10 different reports, questions and comments one thing became clear, that NB 2012-2013 deserves one huge THANK YOU for the time they have invested with no return, for the skills for helping to improve ESN  Lithuania, patience and comprehension, attempts to inspire volunteers of the network and to help them with going further – for all of it and much more NP expressed their gratitude for the President Gintarė Vaiginyte, National Representative Simona Patašiūtė, Public Relations Officer Sandra Baltkojytė, Project Coordinator Sandra Rimavičiūtė, Marketing Coordinator Simas Ivanauskas, IT Coordinator Laurynas Rašimas, SocialErasmus Coordinator Kristina Selezniova, Human Resources Coordinator Vydūnas Pakrijauskas, Sea Battle Coordinator Karolis Sakalauskas and last but not the least Responsible Party Coordinator Indrė Kasiliauskaitė.

Not only members of the latter NB gave their presentation, but also a special guest from our partner Scanbalt Experience has arrived to present himself and to discuss possibilities for future cooperation. After the last speech it was already the time to start voting for the new NB and other important matters.

After sections have expressed their will it came clear that the new Board for 2013-2014 goes as follows:
President – Vytenis Danyla;
NR – Simona Patašiūtė;
HRC – Tomas Tamulevičius
 

PR Officer together with the Project Coordinator stay the same until the next National Platform.

If National Platform one day would decide to limit National Board to one person it would be this position remaining. Position taken by the same lady two years in a row. She has seen, done and experience a lot during these years – from the presentation of her candidacy online to becoming the president of ESN Lithuania, reviving ties with Education Exchanges Support Foundation, organizing Mentors’ Days 2012 and establishing ESN in Lithuania as an official organization. What does it take for Gintarė Vaiginytė to keep organization moving and what does it mean to be responsible for the great part of that? Let’s hear Gintarė answering to all of these questions.

ESN Lithuania and its Public Relations have grown a lot during the recent few years. Now is the time to step further and to try something new and innovative. 

It is an official ESN Lithuania's Newsletter, which subscription was released only few hours ago inviting all the network to unite and to have basic knowledge of what is happening in Lithuania under the sky of ESN.

With the help of ESN Graphics Team, work of ESN LT PR Officer and inspiration of ESN LT NR the project hopefully will be successful enough to encourage all the rest of the network in LT to participate and to add their own details into this initiative. 

First news will be released in Lithuanian language. In case of high interest from abroad, language might be changed to English.

So keep sharing, keep interest and go SUBSCRIBE. 

You can do it HERE and on our official Facebook page. Good luck! 

Responsible Party is a project implemented all across Europe. It’s about smart and simple tips everybody actually knows but doesn’t use while drinking to avoid getting totally wasted. Most of people miss opportunity to join these parties because of the wrong opinion. They say that Responsible Party is the one where the use of alcohol is prohibited but it is not like this. Every RP ambassador would tell you that it’s even healthy to have a glass of wine during your meal every day. And drinking in parties is also available – we just want to stop “binge” drinkers.

The most interesting thing of being a part of this project is organising parties. Preparing everything from the very beginning is like one huge creativity game.  First of all we choose dates, then party themes. After theme is chosen we start brainstorming about party activities. It is really nice when ambassadors meet for their first times in their lives just for this project and they start relaxing together, hanging out with one goal – to make the best party each time. We had really great ideas which made us enjoy our parties such as ambassadors “disco” dance, which attracted people not only to watch but also repeat our moves and make not planned flash mob inside of the club.

Really great experience was parties in other Lithuania’s towns. It was like team building for ambassadors because we spent a lot time together while preparing to go there. We were singing and taking “Responsible Family” pictures, preparing perfect dinner before the party and then going to rule the club! Of course, we couldn’t avoid challenges. On the way to one party which took place 400 km away from Vilnius, one of our tires burst but we didn’t stop, we have reached the party and spread RP spirit.

This project taught all of us many things. We can react fast and smart in critical situations, we know much more people, our point of view to drinking and partying has changed. Some ambassadors learnt a lot about drinking, health, humans’ body, some of them found new friends, good friends, some – their second couples. 

After small ambassadors quiz with a question “What is Responsible Party for You?” almost everyone of them answered the same. They said, that this project gave opportunity to understand how important could be good company, socialising, having fun by feeling free and making such a games as craziest photo competition or looking for your second half. We became one big nice and strong family experienced in organising events.

We do not say stop partying, we do not say stop drinking, we say ENJOY ALCOHOL. That’s what we actually did during whole year.

by Indrė Kasiliauskaitė, National RP Coordinator

After half of the cadency and the recent report of ideas realized during it National Platform was cheering for the work done by ESN Lithuania SE Coordinator Kristina Selezniova. Visiting schools, collecting coins, filming videos, contacting tens of people that projects would become real and even writing articles after all of that – this lady could teach us a lot about  multitasking. 

Today we will try to steal some of her time and find answers to questions why ESN and why Social Erasmus? 

 
How did NBM in Dijon go? Came back with lots of motivation? 
 
NBM was the great opportunity to see once again all the motivated and ESN-inspired personalities. People from different countries, different positions, with various experiences and ideas, but the same goal - ESN.
The most motivational thing was Dijon OC team work – they were amazing! They thought about all the details and made our time in Dijon unforgettable, what once again proved, that together people can really do incredible things.  

 
But it’s not your first international event. How the SE meeting in Brussels helped you for career in ESN? 
 
I was elected as ESN Vilnius University social committee head in the end of 2012 spring.  During few months of action I’ve realized that I really enjoy social activities, and during the summer I started to think about national position. But I still had questions and doubts – what it is and won’t it be too difficult to work on national level. But during SECM I was so impressed by what others are doing in their countries that I decided to be the one, who will motivate Lithuanians to reach higher in SE activities… and one week after SECM we had NP, where I was elected as first national SocialErasmus coordinator.

How does ESN Lithuania look in International context of SocialErasmus?
 
Recently we have uploaded one video-project (for “Global education week” 2012) on internet and international SocialErasmus coordinator Tarek Keskes commented on it:  “ESN Lithuania ROCKS”. I think that what he really meant was that Lithuania really implement lots of various and original projects, in that way promoting SocialErasmus Lithuania activities much more than it was ever done before. 

I believe that Lithuania really needed national SocialErasmus coordinator, but not because that sections were not realising social projects before. No. What we were really experiencing – lack of visibility – in local and International level. New ideas as well. And now we really work to make us visible – we write articles (even small ones on Lithuanian Ministry of Science and Education page), post photos and videos on Facebook and ESN Lithuania web page, upload videos on YouTube. 
 
Which of the projects is your most favorite? 
 
Difficult question! I like them all. But if I have to choose… I really like “Erasmus Unites” video, which was created for 2012 “Global Education Week” (because Erasmus students are speaking in Lithuanian and it’s perfect promotional material for “Erasmus in Schools” project implementing) and also our spring semester “Erasmus Post Cards” project, which, I hope, will become tradition of ESN Lithuania, because it is very simple and involves Erasmus exchange students into social activities from the early beginning. 
 
What are the biggest challenges you face while coordinating SocialErasmus over entire Lithuania?
 
I think the biggest difficulty for sections and at the same time challenge for me, is too frequent changing people in local SE positions. It negatively affects transfer of knowledge about SE activities.  But I try to compensate this by creating some guidelines about already implemented projects, by workshops during NPs and SocialErasmus coordinators’ meetings (we had one, but I hope there will be more of them in the future).   
 
Who or what inspires you not to stop, to reach higher, go further, go social?
 
I think that the main motivation for me is my SocialErasmus coordinators team, who are realizing really wonderful ideas. After one and a half of semester I can bravely say that Lithuanian SocialErasmus coordinators’ team did a huge step forward – we are searching for new partnerships with other organizations or associations, we are not afraid to try something new, we try to be visible and share our experiences with each other. I’m really proud of my team ;)
 
For sure, another inspiration – active Erasmus exchange students, who are extremely happy having opportunity to discover Lithuania while participating in social activities. When in the end of semester Erasmus exchange student says me, that “SocialErasmus activities were the best moments of my Erasmus in Lithuania” I really believe that it’s worth doing.
 

What skills and character features should the following SE coordinator have to continue your successful work? 
 
Inspiration and deep believe into this project – the best ideas come if the person believes in something, not forcing himself just to do one’s duty. That is the most important for SocialErasmus coordinator, whether on local or national level. And then – creativity – to have new ideas for projects, patience and flexibility – to transfer the knowledge and experience for new coordinators and finally, lots of optimism, to motivate ESN’ers and foreign students to be social.

 
And finally: why ESN and why SocialErasmus?
 
Thanks to ISI (International Student Initiative) — organization working like ESN in SciencePo de Grenoble (France), which helped me to discover France, its culture and people during my Erasmus exchange in there. After this wonderful time I decided that I also want to help others to discover Lithuania, but I never expected that my experience in France will lead me to such activity as SocialErasmus.  
 
After my year experience in ESN I can assure that me, and other SocialErasmus coordinators, we not only help to get acquaintance with Lithuania to foreigners. We also experience it in new and unexpected ways by ourselves. And it is the biggest discovery for me. 
 
On behalf of ESN Lithuania Board and entire of the network we thank Kristina for the successfully made effort during all the recent months. Keep up the sprit!

Creating future few years ago for me was something I have never imagined. Now I can bravely say "YES, I CAN". Why? Because I have found a place where all dreams can come true!

Once I had decided that I must apply for ERASMUS - I do not know why, but since school years it was something I had to experience. And finally, I got on the bus which led me to the Warsaw where from  I have almost successfully reached my final destination Ostrava Czech Republic by train. I got tricked by the taxi driver, I got lost in the city at the first day while looking for the super - market when some homeless tried to "take" me while waiting for the train. But still it was the BEST decision in my life to seize this opportunity. 

But the real benefits of this adventure started to show up after getting back to Lithuania. First days being at home, going to lectures were SOOO depressing that I had to do something. It seemed that life is going nowhere as everybody was so sad, wasn't smiling... And forget  (wasn’t thinking) about English for sure! 

This is why I have applied to become a mentor - it was interesting - many parties and friends. However, I have started to ask more. As the ESN office was near the house I was living at that moment, I was attending all meetings, I have also started to help other students to find what they did need and finally I had my first project! At that day I felt the opportunity to create something new, I felt the potential of ESN VGTU which were not exploited. Soon I was elected as the Head Coordinator of the Social Projects Committee. It was 100% new as nobody ever tried to do this - maybe this was the main reason which forced me to go further, the possibility to CREATE. My biggest dream to prove that ERASMUS is not only parties and trips became true - for the first time in Lithuania ESN went SOCIAL. 

Now my tenure is over, but new leaders of the committee continue the traditions to follow the earlier events. They continue develop traditions, which came from my heart and were realized with the help of sleepless nights. In my opinion, this is the biggest reward you can get.

Moreover, ESN changed my personal life and character as well. I have met many new people, who became my new friends. I have learned to communicate with different cultures, I have expanded my horizons and showed to others and to myself that everything is possible. Really! Funny story is that I have even got a full-time job as an Engineer with the help of ESN. 

Nowadays, I still cannot stop. One very clever ESN'er said: "ESN is like a drug – at the moment you try it for the first time you either give it up or you never stop using". And I have not stopped untill now and I won't (sorry for those who doesn't like me :) ). At the moment we have started the ESN LT Alumni club - also something we have never done before. Maybe this is the reason I am here - the reason of possibility to CREATE again. 

To sum up, I cannot imagine a day without ESN. There are still many things to do and many challenges to meet. Thank you all who have worked with me, thank you all who are still working - you are the best! 

ESN is the best place to be in!

by Julius Zaburas

More about ESN LT Alumni HERE.

ESN LT Alumni Facebook.

An event, happening three times in a row might be called a tradition. For ESN Lithuania it is so called Bling Bling party, this time organized for the 3rd and not for the last time. Idea to dress up and to spend a night together with international students from 5 different universities and ESNers from 5 different sections this year seemed to be attractive for more than 700 participants.

But who is standing behind all of that and makes the ends meet and everyone enjoy the results of it? These are 4 people who are hiding under two letters “OC”. Today we will talk with one of them - Darija Kupstaitė.

Why Bling Bling?

The organizers of the first party (a year ago) wanted something not so hard to prepare (either for exchange students or for organizers) but at the same time something memorable, shining and sparkling.  That was how Bling Bling theme came up.

So what does the OC made of? What are you responsible for?

OC is made of people from different sections in Vilnius (one person from each section) and those who were organizers of previous parties. We are responsible for everything actually. We are looking for the place, DJ, musicians, dancers, we even had a violin player. We are also trying to get some discounts for students and trying to keep everything in order. Personally I was responsible for tickets, for counting money and paying for everything (I think it is because I am an economics student :) ), also for decorations and together with all other organizers for keeping the order during the event.

As shortly as possible, what are the main stages of organizing this kind of event?

In my opinion the most important thing is a good team. A clear plan of the event should be in the second place and the third stage is about being stick to the plan.

What was the biggest challenge you’ve faced while preparing Bling Bling 2013 Spring?

Definitely the biggest challenge was the place for the event. We couldn’t get the same place as we had during the previous parties. We called to more than 5 places and every time we got an answer “Sorry, no”. But finally we succeed, we found a very nice place, it wasn’t perfect but it was the best option from those that we have had.

Are you happy with the final results?

I’m quite happy, we did everything we could. Of course we made some mistakes but I believe it will be a lesson for everyone. 

What, do you think, is the reason of Bling Bling’s success?

The main reason, I think, is that students were interested in this event more than ever before. We couldn’t believe that there are so many students who want to attend this party.

Maybe something fun or interesting have happened during the evening what all ESN Lithuania would be interested to read about? :)

The most interesting and a bit unexpected thing was that a group of students was waiting for the last tickets since 9 pm (the door was opened at 10 pm). 

ESN Lithuania sincerely thanks for all the organising team for their amazing job done before, after and on 8th of February!

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!