International

Increase funding by 70% for the new Erasmus program!

ESN together with AEGEE and ESU invites you to support the idea to rise the funding for the following Erasmus program which will change current Erasmus program from 2014.

Needless to say that ESN believes that this increase is justified and we want to give more people the chance to be mobile and have the amazing experience that so many of us have already enjoyed.

How can You help?

Sign the petition

We need to get one million signatures from all European Union countries. So please promote this to all your international students, sign it yourself and make everyone you know sign it. What is more, the General Affairs Council is meeting on Tuesday, November 20 and the budget is discussed. We need to send a strong signal until then and get as many signatures as possible.

The budget of the new EU programme and the budget are only negotiated every seven years. So now is our chance to stand up for mobility and exchange. There will not come an equally good one any time soon.

So what do we plan to do?

There are two main things. To reach those we have joined forces with the other two big student organisations in Europe, AEGEE and ESU. Our two main goals are:

• To secure the funding of ESN International via operational support (currently through the Jean Monnet grant we have been receiving the past years);

• To secure the budget increase for mobility programmes such as the Erasmus programme.

Support the future of Erasmus and Exchange - Sign Fraternité 2020.

• 2100+ international participants
• 760+ cabins
• 40 local ESN sections
• 6 ESN countries
• 5 DJ’s – 3 dance floors
• 5 restaurants – 3 shops
• 4 saunas – 2 pools
• 3 days – 2 nights
• 2 harbors
• 1 unforgettable event!
 
ESN Lithuania is happy having an opportunity to offer an opportunity for 48 exchange students from Lithuania to be convinced that this is one of the greatest party you may have! Places were shared according to an amount of exchange students studying in that university, which ESN section belongs to. Here are the numbers:
• ESN Vilnius University - 10 places,
• ESN VGTU - 10 places,
• ESN VMU - 6 places,
• ESN KTU - 6 places,
• ESN MRU Vilnius - 6 places,
• ESN KuK, ESN KK, ESN ISM, ESN ISLB, ESN ŠU gets 2 places per section.
 
!Some sections might not to fill up all of their places, free places will go to the people who will be in the waiting list according to their registration time!

Registration form >>HERE<<

DEADLINE to registrate - 21st of September, 23:59.
You have to give money to your section coordinator.
Deadline for sections to transfer money - 24th of September, 23:59.
 
Who is responsible in your section?
ESN VMU - Sandra Baltkojytė, [email protected];
ESN KTU - Justina Krauledaite, [email protected];
ESN KK - Modesta Džiaugytė, [email protected];
ESN VGTU - Simona Aršulytė, [email protected], [email protected];
(more soon to come)
 
Participators must agree to the rules of the organizators. Every participator will have to sign a contract. Documents are attached below.

ESN Sea Battle 2012 Fall for exchange students from Baltics will be held on 18-20th of November.

Official event Facebook event HERE.

For more info contact your section or Sandra Baltkojyte, ESN Sea Battle national coordinator by email [email protected].

Sea you on the Boat! And traditionally... it's time to start learning the ESN Sea Battle Movement!

Annual General Meeting of ESN was just officially closed. While AGM Granada OC is still working on post-CNR delegations are slowly coming back home after one week of intense work, various decision making, researches of new partners and many other things. Yesterday the last part of Lithuanian has landed so finally we are all at home and now it is time to share skills we gained, things we experienced and news we were happy to get to know.

Officially AGM was opened at 22nd of March. It was the day then finally all Lithuanian delegation came together. Pink cloud or the so called bubble gum’s color was easily noticeable from everywhere. 10 girls (Ieva Vezbergaitė, ESN LT NR; Sandra Baltkojytė, ESN LT PR/ESN ISM; Simona Patašiūtė, ESN VGTU; Justina Krauledaitė, ESN KTU; Giedrė Gelšvartaitė, ESN KTU/ESN KuK; Kamilė Urbonavičiūtė, ESN KK; Brigita Tumakovaitė, ESN VU; Rusnė Malakauskaitė, ESN VMU; Toma Rimkevičiūtė, ESN ŠU and Viktorija Gurčinatė, ESN MRU Vilnius) represented Lithuania. This time delegation was dressed by personal clothes specially designed for AGM Granada’12 by Simona Patašiūtė (ESN VGTU President). This has helped our delegation to be seen every time and everywhere.

The opening day started then delegations met each other at registration, which was established at Hotel Nazaries***** lobby, the same hotel where our delegation has spent all those 4 nights and 5 days, everyone was invited to a city tour, which was guided by ESN volunteers and took only few hours that there would be enough time to prepare for the opening ceremony. Opening ceremony took place in a luxurious Theatre Isabel La Catolica, where about 400 people were welcomed in AGM Granada right after 10 years after the last AGM in Spain (AGM Lugo 2002). Warm words from IB by Tania, people from AGM OC and Spain education system delegates, videos dedicated to 25th anniversary of Erasmus program and a performance of the local music band playing with traditional instruments invited everyone to enjoy every moment being in Granada. After that participants were invited to have a dinner and later to continue the first day of AGM with Flag parade through the streets of beautiful Granada. From Hotel Nazaries to El Camborio with highly international atmosphere, but always with the colors of yellow, green and red, Lithuanian songs, flags and good mood we were happy to be a part of ESN. We were proud to be able to represent Lithuania – country, which might be a small one in Europe, but not in ESN, where our works are appreciated as other days have shown. So the first day finished in welcome party at El Camborio in front of shinning Alhambra’s castle – 8th miracle of the world. During the first day we have seen lots of things, but there were 3 more days to go.

Friday has invited to an info market, where our delegation has represented 6 different our universities offering a wide range programs of studies. Usually Lithuanian table welcomed people who were really interested in technical sciences more than social ones. Without offering opportunity to better get to know various universities of the Europe, AGM Informaket has invited to see the presentation of new ESN partner – NewYorker, which was offering opportunities to join their team, to use opportunities of internship and just simply discuss about the future perspectives of NewYorker and ESN. At the same time workshops were organized, where we better got to know techniques of decision making, future of Erasmus with Erasmus for All, to listen experiences of Alumnis or try to improve your visual design skills during an hour. After the dinner in the yard of the faculty of Sciences everyone gathered together for the first plenary session at this AGM, where the most exciting part was presentations of candidates to International Board. 3 potential presidents, 3 vice presidents, 3 communication managers, 2 web project administrators and 1 treasurer gave up their future vision of ESN. For more info about presentations contact us. After plenary who took far more than expected time for Eurodinner was coming. Here Lithuania presented their cuisine with white and other kinds of cheeses, candies as Fortūna and Miglė, our traditional TINGINYS. Some meat was provided as well just in usually unexpected forms for our international guests when they got to know that the thing they have just tasted is ear of pig or stomach of chicken. Some Lithuanian drinks were provided as well. That’s how already half of the AGM had passed away.

24th March, Saturday was full of serious information, presentations of the candidates for future international events. Candidacy for AGM 2013 was proposed by 3 different cities: Maribor in SLOVEnia, Vienna in Austria and Milan in Italy. CND 2012 had 3 options as well with candidacies of ESN Maleventum (Italy), ESN Orebro (Sweden) and ESN Valnecia UPV (Spain). ESN TU-Graz and ESN UNI-Graz (Graz, Austia) suggested organizing CEP 2012. At the same day results of previous Board was also presented, decisions about statutes and standing orders and much more. During all day spent under the roof in plenary session we have finally managed to accept some changes in statutes and to work out problems with voting devices that on Sunday the process of IB election would be fluent. This day ended not only with show of horses but also with a Spanish dinner where participants got opportunity to try out Spanish cuisine.

The last and the most important day of the AGM, 25th March, invited to listen about partners of ESN, reports about previous international events and finances we are disposing. Together with that presentation of ESN Alumni has happened as well when ESN Alumni project was elected. It was Erasmus Student Network Politechnika Warszawska (ESN PW / WUT) which got the award and since now they will have even better opportunities to improve their ideas. Without that participants heard about results of project Ride for your Rights, EduK8, ESN Survey, together with plans about future of ESN Card and all ESN, some ideas about corporate identity usage, but the most important part was voting this time. So there and then we have elected not what other soon countries will be filled up with ESN spirit, but also who will lead ESN in the future.

IB:

President - Emanuel Alfranseder (ESN Sweden);
Vice-president - Katharina Ma (ESN Austria);
Treasurer - Mario Alarcon (ESN Spain);
Communication Manager - Juan Colino (ESN Spain);
WPA - Fabian Bircher (ESN Switzerland).

International events for 2012/2013:

• AGM 2013 – ESN Maribor, ESN Slovenia.
• CND 2012 – ESN Örebro, ESN Sweden.
• CEP 2012 – Graz (ESN TU-Graz & ESN UNI-Graz), ESN Austria.
• NEP 2012 – Tallinn, ESN Estonia.
• SEEP 2012 – ESN Athens AUEB, ESN Greece.
• SWEP 2012 – Madrid, ESN Spain.
• WEP 2012 – was not elected.

Elections were over and the only thing what was left was beautiful Gala dinner, which took place in the restaurant of Hotel Nazaries*****. It was the time of beauty, suites and dresses and international ESN STAR awards as well. Best of the bests were announced and the results were amazingly shocking for ESN Lithuania which got an award for the STARproject (Cultural Nights by ESN VMU)!!! Other winners were:

ESN UJ Krakow - STARlight 2012
ESN Zagreb, Croatia - STARTer 2012;
Erasmus Student Network UKSW - webSTAR 2012;
ESN Greece - STARland 2012.

Time of AGM was ending, time for the first goodbyes came. But it’s only for the moment because many more international events are in front of us.

By Sandra Baltkojytė

On the 25-26th February, Gintarė Vaiginytė (President of ESN Lithuania) and Julija Garšvaitė (Project Coordinator of ESN Lithuania) attended the 13th National Platform of Estonia. On the first day, we found out a lot about the projects Tallinn and Tartu sections are organizing and participating in. We met the candidates for the next NR of Estonia and heard the presentation about ESN Italy projects and structure. Also all participants got the chance to find out more about “Let’s do it World” environmental project.

On the 26th February we presented ESN Lithuania, the projects we participate in and our structure. Afterwards we got a private tour in Tallinn by an ESNer from Tartu section.

P.S. Congratulations to Katre Trei – the next NR of ESN Estonia!!! 

More photos may be found here.

From the 19th to 23rd of January 40 people from 32 countries of ESN gathered in Trondheim, the second largest city in Norway (a.k.a. the Ice rink) for the Social Erasmus Coordinator Meeting (SECM).
 
First day everyone got a tour through the city and later had a relaxing dinner and an evening in a Norwegian sauna.  
 
During the second day, SE coordinators presented the SE projects of their countries. Each coordinator had the opportunity to learn about the projects each country is having and to get ideas for the new ones. After the plenaries, everyone got back to the hostel and got ready for Euro Dinner which took place in the city center. During Euro Dinner the participants shared their traditional dishes and had fun dancing and playing Limbo.
 
On the 21st January, the morning started with an open discussion about Social Erasmus projects, its concept and whether SE needs new pillars for the projects (such as cultural, health). Later the coordinators were divided into 3 groups. This day was dedicated for workshops about PR/Communication, Budget/Finansing and Project management. After the workshops, everyone gathered in the main room to have another discussion about SE projects and when the discussions ended, the participants were guided up on a mountain to the tallest building in Norway (rotating restaurant) for the dinner. After it everyone got back to the hostel just to prepare for a Masquerade party, where few nominations for a few distinguished people were given: Miss World, Mr. Universe, Nicest Bum, Best Hair, Best Dancer, Biggest Flirter, Funniest person, etc.
 
On the last day of the meeting, some people started to leave, but the others had another day of workshops, which have covered Teambuilding, Motivation and Event organization workshops. After these, there was a surprise for everyone - the Northern Lights in Trondheim were visible, so this made usual evening to be an extraordinary one! For dinner the OC provided everything from nowadays Norway cuisine – tacos, which now are probably the most popular dish in Norway. After dinner part of the participants went to play some Bowling, others stayed at the hostel.
 
On the 23rd January, most of the participants were already gone away, but the others, who still had a few hours in Trondheim, went for a city tour.
 
All in all, SECM was a very good experience for all SE Coordinators, because we have not only got an opportunity to find out about the projects other countries are making, but also we were encouraged to learn some new useful things during the workshops.
 
More photos may be found here.

From 14th to 16th of November ESN Lithuania delegation was participating in an International ESN event "Sea Battle", which is organized two times per year by ESN Sweden sections. This time Lithuania was represented by 50 participants (including 2 Group Leaders) from 7 different sections of ESN Lithuania: ESN Vilnius University, ESN VGTU, ESN MRU Vilnius, ESN ŠU, ESN VMU, ESN KTU and ESN KK.

In the morning of 14th of November our delegation finally arrived to Estonia, where they were met by cold sea breeze and a unique old town, which is included in the list of UNESCO's World Heritages Sites. Having a few hours before departure, it gave them the opportunity to explore the city. In the evening everyone gathered around in the Tallink Cruise ship Terminal-D, where they have shared tickets and signed participant contracts which binded to take responsibility for their own actions. Time to step in to the Tallink Silja Cruise ship "Baltic Queen" has finally come!

All the participants were settled in 4 place cabins, which were located on the same floor. This allowed them to communicate more conveniently. First evening they headed to Stockholm with only about 300 students from ESN sections of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The program of the first night invited everyone to parties, which were located in two different ship clubs: "Starlight Palace" and "Ibiza Club". Culmination of the evening was then few exchange students encouraged by hot blood and unfading enthusiasm were running on the deck half-naked :)

In the morning of 15th of November they have finally reached Stockholm. Here students could already feel the spirit of Christmas floating in the air, while Christmas Trees and Christmas Towns were being built in the centre of the city. After having some time for sightseeing, they came back to the cruise ship terminal, where it was very hard to get through queues, formed by Scandinavian students, who were waiting for their checking and getting on board.

After students from Sweden, Norway and Denmark have joined them, there were more than 2000 students on the cruise! Each of them had a great opportunity to participate in the informational meeting, where the NR of ESN Swedenn was teaching everyone the already so extremely popular ESN Sea Battle Movement dance. Later the evening program offered activities for everyone – starting from Speed Dating, Crazy Games, Pub Quiz, ending with a Karaoke event which turned out to be quite popular among international students, Salsa lessons or two different parties in the two clubs of the ship.

While foreign students were having fun, Group Leaders and security of the ship (in other words "the people in blue or yellow T-Shirts" as they were called by passengers) were taking care of everyone’s safety and maintaining order in corridors and territories of clubs.

In the morning of 16th of November ESN Lithuania delegation left the ship. "Sea Battle’11 Autumn" was over for them, but continued for students from ESN Sweden, ESN Norway and ESN Denmark. During those days and nights many things have happened. Some of them were funny, some – painful, but all in all everyone came back safely, with many adventures to tell and ready to repeat ESN Movement in up-coming "Sea Battle" events!

Julija Garšvaitė

Dear students and fellow Europeans,

Education is the most potent answer to bring about a tolerant and respectful society. Europe's future relies on citizens who will respect human rights and banish prejudice, hatred, and racism. It is imperative to enable the continent's youth to experience Europe in all its beauty and diversity.

Meeting people with different cultural backgrounds and staying in their home countries encourages tolerance, respect, and understanding. The Human Rights Declaration (§26, par. 2) states that education shall promote "understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups" it is thus necessary to develop student mobility into an integral element of our educational systems so that young people will learn not only about economics, literature or sciences but also - and just as importantly - about each other's thoughts, values and traditions.

We believe that student mobility is thus a fundamental element in assuring the sustainability of the European project and of European societies as a whole. There needs to be time and space to gain a practical understanding of Europe's core values, which in turn will empower young people to find a common European identity.

In 1999, 27 European Ministers of Education signed the Bologna declaration and created the European Higher Education Area to increase border-crossing mobility and employability. Meanwhile, there are 47 countries participating in the Bologna process. Twelve years after its implementation a great deal has been achieved in changing degree structures and furthering Europe's capacity to compete for overseas fee-paying students, but the student mobility has not received the boost many would have expected, neither quantitatively nor qualitatively. Student mobility is still reserved to only a handful of students, remains socially selective, and those who had the chance to study abroad for a semester or a year still face recognition and replacement problems after the exchange period.

Today, neither political nor geographical boundaries exist any longer in the EU. It is about time for all activists and those responsible to tear down all socio-economic barriers that hinder the achieving and surpassing the objective of having 20% of all European students become mobile no later than 2020.

We therefore call upon politicians, rectors, economic agents, and the society at large to work together for furthering support for student mobility!

• National Governments and the European Commission must rethink the financing of mobility: available grants are locked into national structures that do not account for the imbalance in the demand for mobility across the continent nor take the difference of living costs in its fullest consideration. Grant mechanisms should be made more flexible and they must not, under any circumstance, privilege shorter stay instead of longer and more exchanges.
• Higher Education Institutions must take more institutional responsibility for furthering mobility, notably as far as curricular design is concerned. Flexible curricular pathways lend themselves to studies abroad much more than strictly and densely packaged curricula. A European Code of Best Practices on course design could further the adoption of "mobility windows" and enable the establishment of a threshold of optional courses.
• The European Commission and the European Parliament must put more emphasis on the quality of credit mobility, notably with respect to recognition. A positive step would be to appoint an Ombudsman able and willing to take legal action to defend students whose Learning Agreements have not been fully respected.

Campus Europae Student Council
Erasmus Student Network

www.rideforyourrights.org

Ride for your Rights! Update from Andreas Reiterer on Vimeo.

For the Central European Platform, approximately 100 representatives of ESN sections from Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Croatia are expected to gather in Cracow for a truly  memorable event! 
Can you think of a better way to spend quality time than while meeting a group of about 100 ESN members in a Magical City?

Official website:  cep.esn.pl

Facebook page

Attention! CEP event is dedicated for local ESN level - for ESN sections and their members.
Every ESN Lithuania section member has right to participate in the event, however the places are limited. Each ESN section from Lithuania have 1 seat guaranteed. However, more than 1 member from a section can registered, provided that there will be free places left. In any case, you should inform your section president about your intent to participate in CEP.
 
From this year registrations to all ESN international events will be done through centralized system with Galaxy account.
 
In order to register for CEP (or any other event) you should register to Galaxy and hold your account. 
 
Registration to CEP:
 
If you already hold  Galaxy account:
a) Go to http://rp.esn.org/content/cep-registration
b) Press Login and enter your Galaxy account username and password
c) Fill in registration form
d) Wait for approval by CEP organizators
 
 
If you do no hold  Galaxy account:
1) Go to https://galaxy.esn.org/
2) Press register (up-right corner) and fil in the form
3)  Inform your section president ASAP, so s/he could approve your account (by assigning you a role, e.g. local active member)
4) After your section president approves your account in Galaxy, please follow steps a) b) c) d) as described above.

The 22nd October is now written into history of ESN Lithuania as the day of PRIME conference, which was first of this scale event in ESN Lithuania, as the first PRIME conference, which was held some time ago, did not have so many attendants, including Representative from European Commision, Ministry of Education and Science and many Higher education institutions. It needs to be mentioned that we were proud to welcome ESN AISBL Treasurer Damien Lamy-Preto and the main ESN PRIME coordinator Justyna Pisera.

The conference was hosted by ESN MRU Vilnius and covered the results of PRIME project. Both international and national results were presented. As we know, academic exchange is a multilevel process and the principle of integrity must be kept discussing future strategies of students mobility. Organizers were glad to see that after presenting the material of the conference, quite a huge discussion evolved. Participants were expressing their opinions on the results of PRIME project, discussing success and failure stories and suggesting some improvements. So, hopefully, each of the participants got something valuable from this event.

The good news are that the general results of PRIME are much better than the previous year. The worst situation is considered to be in Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, while Lithuania is in the 8th place. So, our situation is comparably not bad, but there are still things to improve.

To mention shortly, here is the index of recognition in Lithuania:

Full recognition: 79,78 %

Not full recognition: 20,22 %

More results are coming soon as a separate edition.

EDUK8 Training!

The network is proud to present you the first ESN International training within the ESN EduK8 project. Now, you might wonder what ESN EduK8 is about? ESN EduK8 is a training system in ESN, which was launched this year. The aim is to train on the international level ESN EduK8 trainers, who will forward their knowledge and competences to the national and local level through series of training. 
 
As this system was launched this year, we will also hold the first international training this year in Hungary, Esztergom (close to Budapest). This first training event will focus on communication skills, team management, how to become a trainer, feedbacking and funding opportunities in Europe. The training will take place from the 21st until the 27th of August 2011. For this one-week training, led by trainers from the European Youth Forum and the American Field Service, the participation fee is are only 180€. 
 
The registration and further information about the exact programme is to be found here. The deadline for registration is now: 16th of July 2011. The maximum capacity of the training is 50 places and if necessary a selection procedure will be applied. We however highly encourage all people being interested in the field of trainings and the topics included in the training to apply for the event, as the most important factor is the motivation and the willingness to learn !!
 
The whole OC and ESN International are looking forward to welcome you in Hungary for the first training and the start of the ESN EduK8 training system!!