In the Network
Key2Europe 2019-2020
Road to the Strategy in AEGEE Written by Evita Ločmele and Yannic Lades Member of Strategy Committee that was finalised at Agora Zaragoza 2013. It gave us our current vision and mission, which clearly defines, and in a written form, what we all as AEGEEans are trying to achieve in the long run. In this way, we added more purpose and direction to the Strategic Plan that can be seen as a tool that allows us to achieve our mission. In recent years though we once more observed some issues with our way of strategic planning, as the overall network involvement and numerous fulfillment rates were relatively low. Therefore, as the drafting of the Strategic Plan 2020-2023 started, the Planning Team, which was appointed in April 2019, decided to tackle the problems regarding strategy in AEGEE with a reformed way to implement strategic planning in AEGEE: The Strategic Framework.
2019 and 2020 were the years of strategy in AEGEE. With the Strategic Planning Meeting in Köln in June and afterwards the ratification of Strategic Plan 2020-2023 at Agora Salerno, we decided about the path we will go for the next three years. Also, the European Planning Meeting 2020 in Barcelona and ratification of the Action Agenda during the Online Spring Agora 2020 sets up a promising start for the new Strategic Plan which commences on the 1st of August 2020. This brings up the question: When did we start to think about Strategy in AEGEE? And how did we approach this topic in the past? The first attempts at strategic planning in AEGEE date back more than 25 years ago; in 1993, a “Year Plan” was introduced. Since then a lot has changed: In 2000 the 4 pillars of action - Higher Education, Peace & Stability, Cultural Exchange & Active Citizenship - were defined and later replaced by our current system of Thematic Focus Areas which change every three years. A huge step forward was the Identity reform
Primarily the Strategic Framework combines all elements that are connected to our strategy: the identity of AEGEE, the 3-year Strategic Plan containing Focus Areas and Organisational Improvements as well as the current 1-year Action Agenda for the Focus Areas. The Planning Team created a new format for the Strategic Plan, that was drafted at the Strategic Planning Meeting 2019 in Köln. The final version of the Strategic Plan 2020-2023 was voted upon and ratified by Agora Salerno 2019. It consists of four Focus Areas: Climate Emergency, Mental Health, Political Activism, Social Equity. Beside that are 10 Organisational Improvements which are also included. They will also help to define the next 3 years in AEGEE. The Planning Team furthermore identified another necessary point for the success of our strategy: A clear communication, distribution of all the relevant documents and the efficient cooperative work of everybody involved. As this could only be partly solved by structure, with the ratification of this Framework at Autumn Agora Salerno 2019 there was also a new committee founded: The Strategy Committee. The main task of
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