There it was, between the 20th and the 24th of November, the European School on Leadership in Delft. In the months prior to the event, Tommy, Jayme, Marlijn and I focused on the planning, the logistics, the trainers and the ‘miljoenennota’ that ultimately became the budget for this event. Nah just kidding, the budget of the event was not in the millions, but thanks to the University Fund and a European fund we had to worry a little bit less about some of the costs.
What made this event special is the following: you’ve probably been to the local events, where once in a while a stray AEGEEan from another local is present. Many of us also went to Show Your Colour, an event where many other AEGEEans from other locals were present. Actual European Events have AEGEEans from the entire network, but this event knocked them all out the park! Since we, especially the trainers, also made contact with other student organizations within Europe such as EESTEC, BEST and AIESEC.
This allowed us to let the true AEGEE spirit resonate with the non-AEGEEs of the event during the event.
The event consisted of 4 days of training on developing and finding leadership qualities. Through various workshops, the participants were given the opportunity to find and develop their inner leader. Examples of training are time management, how to give feedback and how to lead a team.
During the day when the trainers taught the participants things about, for example, time management, how to give feedback and how to lead a team, while we as organizers were mainly busy making the event run as smoothly as possible. That largely meant cooking food, cooking a lot of food, and therefore also getting a lot of food at the supermarket!
This resulted in some comical plays at X, Sport and Culture, for example, we were cooking during an Indian lights festival and had to get 4 kilos of tomatoes at the store to puree them for an lunch soup.
In the evenings we took over as trainers and learnt the participants why Delft is so beautiful.
For example, Tommy and Jayme gave a City Tour in the evening, which wasn’t 100% accurate at some points, we partied at ‘de Kurk’ and on Friday evening we ended up with 4 of the participants at a house party in the Korvezeestraat where there opened a whole new world in terms of parties for the non-Dutchies.
It was a great time and it was a great team to work with and I can wholeheartedly endorse that everyone should organize or at least help at an European Event in their AEGEE career. For example, take in consideration the Summer University that will be organized this summer!
Hereby a special thanks to Elitsa for assisting us with the European fund!
Jeroen Roseboom
