AIESEC in Belgium annual report 2019-2020

ANNUAL REPORT 2019 - 2020

AIESEC in Belgium AIESEC in Belgium is a youth-run international non-profit organisation.

Located in Brussels, Belgium. This annual report will high light the most important accomplishments of AIESEC in Belgium in the year 2019-2020.

Table of contents

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About AIESEC

Message from the president

Why, how and what

The team

Our products This Year

Highlights of 2019 - 2020

Outgoing Global Exchange

Incoming Global Exchange

Talent Management Finance The collaborations

Working with AIESEC

Vision for the future

Special thanks

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Message from the president Dear friends, supporters and colleagues, I am pleased to inform you that AIESEC in Belgium has been growing and developing for 72 years and as we close this executive year, AIESEC is ready more than ever to grow and develop further no matter what challenges lie ahead of us and we want to do it together with you.

It feels like yesterday since as a team we started our journey and now looking back at the experience, it has truly been an extraordinary year. Leadership has always been the centre of everything we do and this year we strove for better and stronger leadership for a sustainable organisation with consistent growth in people and products. With the Covid-19 global outspread, we quickly adapted to the environment taking the necessary changes and action steps to maintain a sustainable direction towards the future of leadership. Throughout the report you will see the key projects that helped us shape leadership in different forms.

As Andy Warhol said, “The idea is not to live forever, but to create something that will.� A phrase that can help capture the vision of this year, to look for long term growth and development of the organisation and constantly bringing leadership back to the table.

Everything that you will read and experience in this report is all thanks to your support and wishes and AIESEC in Belgium is very grateful for that. I look forward to witnessing AIESEC and you to keep collaborating to achieve greater things in the nearest future.

Kind regards,

Jaideep Sidhu

About AIESEC AIESEC is an international youth-run organization. We are a global network of young leaders under the age of 30 who strive to better themselves and the communities around them. Passionate about world issues, leadership development, cultural understanding and experiential learning. The organization spans 120+ countries and territories and every aspect of AIESEC’s operations are managed by youth.

We are a non-political, independent, not-for-profit organization run by youth. Since we were founded we have engaged and developed over 1,000,000 young people who have been through an AIESEC experience. This impact can be seen through our alumni who represent business, NGO and world leaders.

Why We strive for peace and fulfillment of humankind’s potential. AIESEC was established in 1948 after World War II, where seven youth across seven countries had a dream of building cross-cultural understanding across nations.

Expose people to new cultures and cultural differences, developing leadership in youth hoping for a change in the world.

How We place our confidence in youth, as they are the key to unlock a better future. We believe that leadership is the fundamental solution and it can be developed in anyone.

Youth are the leaders of the future, developing them by introducing them to different cultures and developing necessary qualities for better leadership in the upcoming years.

What We enable young people to develop their leadership through learning from practical experiences in challenging environments. We do this to cross-cultural exchanges and by creating these opportunities. The seven youth starting AIESEC hoped to change the world, one person and one internship at a time. Can you imagine what happens to the world when we engage and develop every young person? This is the question that drives us as we strive to achieve what we envision: Peace and fulfillment of humankind’s

The Team This year the team consisted of 7 individuals from 6 nationalities. divided over the different responsibilities within the board of AIESEC in Belgium:

Elisabetta Castaldo

Karina Korniets

Head of Outgoing Operations

Head of Human Resources

Vasiliki Koraki

Fadia Frangie

Head of Incoming Operations

Head of Business Development

YoĂŤlle van der Laan

Radimhan Yandiev

Head of Marketing

Head of Finance and Legal

Jaideep Sidhu President

Our products Global Volunteer

Global Talent

Global Entrepreneur

Our Global Volunteer product is a program of 6-8 weeks volunteering in non-government organizations (NGOs) around one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

AIESEC works towards improving the SDGs and contributes to this by building their opportunities of Global Volunteer around one of the seventeen SDGs.

Our Global Talent product is a program of 6-18 months of doing a paid internship in a medium enterprise or multinational.

Developing yourself in different positions related to your current background. We run this product nationally and send people abroad and welcome international trainees to Belgium for these paid internships.

Our Global Entrepreneur product is a program of 6-12 weeks working in a start-up.

Helping start-ups around the world to improve their business processes, while developing yourself and your skills. An unpaid internship abroad. Learning skills by helping to improve the processes within a startup

In Belgium we focus on sending Belgian youth abroad in order to contribute to different countries all over the world.

Next year this product will consist of small-term, medium-term and long-term internships, still giving the first professional experience to youth.

In the upcoming year this product will be merged with our current Global Talent program.

The 16 standards In order to deliver consistent

quality to partners and youth and facilitate leadership development we have a support and service that we provide summarized in 16 standards. Within the process of an exchange, AIESEC in Belgium is responsible for different aspects of these 16 standards. What standards depends on whether the exchange is happening in Belgium or outside of Belgium. As an organization we always strive to deliver these standards as good as possible.

Highlights of 2019-2020 The year we aimed at reconnecting with our purpose as an organization.

We wanted to bring the essence of being in Belgium and working for our society while understanding better why AIESEC exists fundamentally. The vision of the year is “Meant to be, since 1948” which indicates that we have been developing and growing as an organisation since 1948 developing youth leadership and this year AIESEC is meant to care, grow, develop and evolve to heights that it has never seen before.

Definitely with the corona virus the meaning of the vision changed yet the essence and purpose till date is very relevant and true. Let me take you through some of the highlights of the year.

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Successfully secured “International Agreement” with the government of Brussels region for our incoming international traineeships.

Given the context of covid-19, we organised the first fully online national conference event for our membership.

Evolution of our HR strategy to make it relevant to young people of Belgium.

Three additional local chapters started managing incoming traineeships which makes the total count to 5 that are running the incoming traineeships product out of a total of 9 local chapters.

Evolution of our Marketing and University relations strategy to not only reinforce the relevance of AIESEC in society but also simplify it.

Growth in our relationships with AIESEC in Indonesia, Vietnam, Costa Rica, Brazil and Peru for volunteering opportunities.

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Huge improvements in Information and data management internally in different sectors of the organisation.

Successful re-allocation of head office to a new coworking environment in the centre of Brussels.

We are amongst the top providers of incoming traineeships in AIESEC in the european region.

What is Outgoing global exchange?

Outgoing global exchange is an overarching term for the products that we have with which we send young people between 18-30 years old abroad. This year the focus was on the product Global Volunteer. On the national level there are two main responsibles regarding our Outgoing exchange product.

First we have the national responsible for Marketing, YoĂŤlle van der Laan, she was responsible for the first part of our funnel, lead generation. Creating marketing strategies to have a bigger reach within Belgium.

Secondly we have the national responsible for Outgoing global exchange, Elisabetta Castaldo, she is responsible for the rest of the funnel. Supporting people in their exchange abroad and all the steps before that.

Outgoing Global Exchange What did we plan?

As an organization we are running at the moment three different products with which we send people abroad. Global Volunteer, Global Entrepreneur and Global Talent, since most of our local offices are active in Global Volunteer, our main strategy was based on this product.

For Global Volunteer we build the strategy around “product packaging”. This meant that after conducting all information of the past 3 years four packages were built around our four main customer personas. Besides that, in order to improve the experience of our customers there was a focus on International Relations and Partnerships and Exchange participant management.

The packages were built around four topics; economics, linguistics, inequality and climate change. Each package consisted of four possible opportunities related to the topic.

There were two packages that were country based. These packages were created based on our research combining the possible projects in the country with the background.

The other two packages were region or subject based. These packages were created taking into account the main Sustainable Development Goals and the most popular countries of the past three years. combinding these two the two packages “Contribute to preserve the Rainforest” and “Reduce inequality Latin America” were created.

For the products Global Entrepreneur and Global Talent the main strategies were International relations and Partnerships and Exchange participant management. Focussing on the experience of the Exchange participant and the converting the leads throughout the process.

But what happened after corona?

Also as AIESEC we struggle with the pandemic. Since our processes are focused on sending people abroad the pandemic had a great impact on the Outgoing Global Exchange department. From our own perspective, but also from the international level the decision was made not to promote going abroad in the current situation. Therefore, a change within this department was necessary to stay active, present and have an impact.

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In order to make this happen two initiatives were created with the overarching name of Beyond AIESEC. The first initiative was to create webinars related to different topics, engaging our target audience being the youth of Belgium. Giving them the opportunity to gather information related to different topics. In order to make this happen the national level worked closer than ever with the local level. This meant organizing and creating the full initiative together. This initiative had the result of 8 IGTV videos that were created and posted on our channels, 8 webinars, and impacting 83 participants who registered for our webinars.

With 8 webinars also came 8 different speakers, which we would like to thank for their contribution and help throughout this initiative: Your LinkedIn profile - Prof vercauteren How to do a virtual job interview - My Shortlist A talk about Human rights - PWI Mental Health and wellbeing - Goodgoesviral Marketing & Sales - Sanae Saadaoui Time management - Mohamed Fadel Giving and receiving feedback - Iris Vlodaver Emotional intelligence - Laura gimeno

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The second initiative stayed closer to our core of cross-cultural exchanges, namely by organizing online virtual exchanges. Giving the opportunity to experience a culture from the comfort of your house. Working together with four different countries to make this possible, four weeks of sessions around these countries. Touching on different topics and giving them the experience they couldn’t have because of the pandemic. This pandemic will not stop what we are doing and wanting to achieve with our organisation and we send ‌. people on a virtual exchange, having four sessions per week related to the countries Brazil, Indonesia, Uganda and Romania.

To conclude, as a department we fought through the uncertainty, took the challenge as an opportunity and stayed through to achieve what we want to achieve. Standing up and staying true to what we want to achieve, this initiative was created. Working together with different countries, people and companies, as well as the local offices in order to make these events possible.

Elisabetta Castaldo

Head of Outgoing Operations

YoĂŤlle van der Laan Head of Marketing

1632 93 95 31

People interested in going abroad

83

People registered for the webinar

People who committed to go abroad

People that went abroad

20

People went on a virtual exchange

Countries impacted

“The idea to go volunteering to Indonesia came through my Master’s program in Ghent University.

It was a great opportunity to broaden my worldview in every sphere of life. In our project we had a great group of volunteers from all over the world. We learned a lot from each other, and living in Indonesia taught us so much about culture that I have never known before. I came to understand how gender equality, the theme of our project, is already very far in Finland, but there is still work to do.

Thank you AIESEC for providing this great opportunity!”

Terhi

Indonesia

“Thinking back to my experience, I feel grateful. Happy. A little bit sad because it’s over.

My journey started with AIESEC university of Antwerp. I got to know them on one of KdG’s infosessions about our international internship, and signed up at their booth immediately. I quickly received opportunities tailored to the requests I made in my registration form, which was great, since I was in direct contact with one of their outgoing teammembers. Laure Ann listened to my remarks, and found the perfect fit for me after only few attempts.

The process that followed afterwards was so smooth, I barely had to do anything. After my acceptance at Kinderpedia, AIESEC took care of everything. I didn’t have to worry about finding a place to stay, or figuring out Romanian culture since International Business Managementthey supported me every step of the way. Thanks to their impeccable service I got to leave for my internship stressfree, sure that everything would be arranged once I arrived.

Besides that, my experience their was as great as you would think it would be. I got to know people from over 10 different nationalities, improved myself on a personal level, as well as on a professional level, got to contribute in a meaningful way to Kinderpedia, and so much more.

Thank you to AIESEC again, both Antwerp and university of Bucharest. Eternally grateful for this opportunity!“

Lore

Romania

What is Incoming global Exchange?

AIESEC in Belgium has historically been one of the pioneering entites in the global AIESEC network when it comes to providing professional traineeships where AIESEC welcomes young people between 18-30 years old to Belgium for a professional traineeship. This year the focus was on upscaling our current partners to deliver bigger projects together and create better account management, create better information management and CRM systems and lastly add more valuable partners.

We run traineeships both in the national office and local offices in Belgium. The business development team on national office was spearheaded by Fadia Frangie as the head of the department, Radimhan Yandiev supporting as customer experience and legal responsible. Vasiliki Koraki was heading the team of local offices to support them to achieve quality local traineeships.

Incoming Global Exchange

What does Incoming Exchange mean for Belgium?

Regarding our Incoming Exchange program there were four main strategies that was focused on.

From which three were conducted by the Business Development team, which were Upscaling of the partnership with Microsoft, new sales for portfolio diversification and information management and CRM system evaluation. The fourth one is focused on by the Head of Operations for Incoming Exchange, which was the increase in the number of local offices facilitating traineeships. These focusses will be explained further:

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The first focus of the Business Development team was the upscaling of the partnership with Microsoft Belgium. This year Microsoft has been our most important partner. It has grown from 7 to 20 since last year which represents 186% growth and focusing on the program development in the 3 different offices (Zaventem, EGA and Luxembourg).

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As Microsoft in Belgium and AIESEC in Belgium have a well-known partnership across the Microsoft network, we started to work with the regional office facilitating the exchange program in 12 countries, including Belgium, for 16 trainees. The project had Marketing as the main background of this initiative. AIESEC in Belgium was the main responsible for the negotiation and selection processes.

At the end of the 18.19 term, we signed a collaboration for Youth For Global Goals with Microsoft in the European Government Affairs office, located in Brussels. Despite the fact that the event was not delivered in April 2020 due to COVID-19, the event’s preparation allowed AIESEC in Belgium to network better with some Microsoft managers as well as explore the possibility for Microsoft and AIESEC to upscale the partnership.

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The second focus was New Sales for portfolio diversification.

In order to grow traineeships further, we focused this year on portfolio-diversification. Our main focus was still account management, but we needed to grow in our processes and therefore focus on diversifying our portfolio. The main highlights for New Sales have been the following three partnerships:

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This year’s third focus was Information Management and CRM system evolution We moved from Hubspot as a CRM to Odoo in the national office as we wanted a more user friendly and simpler tool. We successfully managed to migrate all information of the past years meanwhile maintaining the old CRM in order to retain information. The change not only made account management easier but also efficient.

We also renewed all our legal and customer experience documents and information booklets in order to give simpler and easier information updated to the Belgian law and accurate to current context of Belgium in consultation with relevant legal authorities.

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The last focus was an Increase in the number of local offices facilitating Traineeships In the first semester of the term we had two out of nine local offices facilitating incoming traineeships and in the later half of the term we had three more local offices stepping up to officially start running the product of incoming professional traineeships. As a national office we put trust in the remaining four local offices to pilot the product in this semester as well.

To conclude we really saw the product finding base in this term. Focussing on the necessary improvements and making things happen.

Fadia Frangie

Head of Business Development

73 105K

Trainees that arrived in Belgium

Total revenue created

Vasiliki Koraki

Head of Incoming Operations

30

Different nationalities

“AIESEC’S Global Talent internship opportunity has given me the chance to kick off my international career in a way one could only dream.

For over 6 months now, I’ve been part of Microsoft’s European Government Affairs team thanks to AIESEC. My role encompasses organizing events and managing different marketing activities and really puts to practice the skills and competences I’ve learned during university and while being part of AIESEC. I believe this program puts me in a position to learn constantly from my experience in Microsoft and gives me access to more opportunities to build a great global career in the future.

Tamas

Romanian Peoplegovernment who committed to Coordinator go abroad at Microsoft Trainee European Affaris

“Being a part of AIESEC while I was still in college gave me the opportunity to learn a new set of skills while putting them into practice while working with a purpose. This went from teamwork and tracking to learning how to work in a global and interconnected environment.

After my AIESEC experience, I moved on to go on an internship and I was able to apply everything I had learned in AIESEC and University and fit into a large and global organization, managing to take on a global role and put my 6 year AIESEC experience in practice. I believe AIESEC served as a platform for me to be able to connect and establish a clear path to achieve my planned long-term career path.

For this I am thankful to AIESEC and to all the people I was able to meet and work with in the process.”

Edgar

Venezuelan Trainee at UCB S.A

“You will find yourself with a small team but very international, the dynamic of the team is nice and they are always willing to support you.

You will work with different projects of different scopes so you will definitely find something that you feel passionate about and working as a Program Coordinator in The Synergist will help you improve your project management skills but also your people skills. From day one you find yourself being involved in different meetings and you always have space and are encouraged to put your ideas out there.

You will be also given the tools to run meetings like sprints and scrums, and there is space for you to bring up your own ideas or propose a new way of doing things.”

Daniela

Ecuador Trainee Project Coordinator at The Synergist

“Our partnership with AIESEC enables us to bring great talent to UCB that has high energy, motivation and a hard-work mindset.

At UCB we offer a challenging environment for our trainees and work together to build relevant projects that shape the company. We can see every day how our trainees are impacting our business while developing themselves personally and professionally.

Since we started our collaboration with AIESEC we brought to UCB over 170 trainees from around the world and hired 40% of them as full-time employees, after their traineeship.

We have grown our partnership with AIESEC throughout the last 9 years and believe that we will continue to invest in this collaboration, which brings a positive outcome in both parties.”

Joao

Portugal Campus Management Coordinator at UCB S.A

Membership is the core for an organization and the work of Talent Management is helping to have people, education, culture, and management which is necessary to achieve the strategy we planned and the goals we set. In Belgium we noticed that there were just some basics, which was stopping our people from reaching their full potential. Based on this, one of our main focuses was to bring everything together and organized for it to be user friendly and useful for a long-term perspective.

We started with moving the Membership database back to a better CRM-system (Podio) so we could collect data about each member in one place and connect it between each other: participation in engagement surveys, conferences, etc.

We also wanted not only to keep the information there but transform it into a workplace. In addition to that, we focused on analyzing all the collected data to make data-driven decisions. At the moment we have separate tools for each of the Local Committee to track their implementation progress with education or team standards, but they are compiled in one dashboard. There you can find a clear picture of each Local Committee and extra information, like historical data or useful links.

Talent Management

The second focus was on upgrading the recruitment process from promotion to the selection and allocation. For the promotion, we came up with an attractive message based on the needed profile and design it in a way to stand out among other university organisations. Based on the same profile, the selection process became more explicit and objective - each question or task was designed to check a certain competence of the candidate.

It’s not enough just to recruit the right people - they also need to be inducted and educated. For this, together with the product heads we created an onboarding journey. We designed the first 3 weeks of new members in the organization for each track. It includes a clear schedule of touchpoints, list of theoretical topics, tasks to put them in practice and measurements of successful delivery. Along with that, for implementation, we provided the materials and agenda to deliver each touchpoint, short videos, personalized tracking and incentive system.

Due to changes in Organizational development Model, we started to decrease in the number of Members in the past years. In the previous term we started growing our membership again and gaining more manpower for our organisation. This year we didn’t only maintain the growth but even increased it by 3%.

Besides that, we improved our Retention Rate. Retention rate is the percentage of members who stay in the organisation for a semester. This number was already quite high, and this year we even improved it further by focussing on the best experience for our members.

Empowering them to contribute to the goal of our organisation and performing. Hoping that providing them the best experience, creates and contributes to the development of their leadership.

To be sure that we are providing the experience we promised we also worked on improving team standards implementation. In the beginning, we realized that improving all of them couldn’t be implemented - we needed to prioritize and focus on the most important. The first one was the Personal Development Plan framework - there were a lot of complaints about this framework from the local level. After collecting all inputs, the new one was created and successfully implemented in all levels. Besides that, we created many one-page guidelines easy to read and implement to increase Leadership Capacity.

During July launched a small course of workshops for each of the tracks to improve the learning capacity of the members, give them an opportunity to look of the other tracks and have a more prepared pipeline for the higher positions. We designed it in a more engaged, interactive and practice-oriented way to encourage our members after exams.

Focussing on these changes in the department of Talent Management made the evolution in our membership possible.

Karina Korniets

Head of Human Resources

19% 92% 58% 43

Growth in our membership

Of our members committed and voluntered for a full year

Of our membership is part of AIESEC for more than 6 months

Members joined the summer skills camp initiative

I “AIESEC is a platform where you are encouraged to get out of your comfort zone and to outdo yourself. You have a sense of belonging to the AIESEC family that supports and motivates your personal and professional growth.”

Marcella

AIESEC in Campus Brussels

“AIESEC has helped me grow in so many ways, it’s much more than just being a part of an association, it’s more like being a part of a big family who will always be there for you. I’m surrounded by people who push me to do my best everyday, and I feel so proud for all the progress I’ve achieved so far.

It has surprised me more times than I can count, and I know that it will continue challenging me, positively, through this journey. “

Inês

AIESEC in Louvain-la-Neuve

The main strategy of Finance was Fostering Finance, which meant focussing on budget execution and Improving Financial Reporting. On the legality part of this department the main focus was the Single permit process.

For Budget Execution, our main planned objective in August 2019 was 100% Budget Execution on national level, which would include local achievement indirectly by fulfilling their planned revenue from local contribution. As happened in previous years the budget was tracked closely and reported weekly with the necessary follow up of our Business Development department and our local committee revenue, since these were our main revenue sources. We used this information to give a constant prediction of the final result.

We were able to achieve a revenue of 164k which is a 94% fulfillment based on the replanned budget after COVID-19 hit. Eventhough the impact of this crisis was big financially speaking, we still managed to strive for our goals and try to achieve as much as possible.

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Finance and Legal

In costs we executed a total of 192k and were able to cut 49.000 EUR compared to the initial plan. We are closing the year with a loss of 28.031,52 EUR. Since our second strategy was Improving Financial Reporting the focus was on the Finance Standards. Which are six Standards conducted by the International Office that the finance department should focus on in order to improve their financial status.

The finance standards are: legality, accounting, reporting, budgeting, auditing and sustainability.

All standards consist of small criteria that need to be met in order to reach 100% for this criteria.

In the following part we will go further into the state of the first five finance standards and explain more about the status of AIESEC in Belgium in each of them.

First we will start with the standard legality. As AIESEC in Belgium is a global member in alert, which has as a consequence that we can not vote and thus contribute to the global direction of AIESEC. The main reason we are missing this is due to the still ungoing audit done by PwC. One of the criteria for this standard is to have an updated external audit. Due to different reasons our audit of 2016 is still stuck in review.

The greatest success in terms of legalities was acquiring the international

agreement with the Federal government in Brussels. This sufficiently improved

the efficiency of our visa proceses and made the contact with the government run

more smoothly. Negotiations with the government of Flanders to arrange the same

agreement have progressed but are ongoing.

The percentage we as AIESEC in Belgium are currently reaching for legality is 88.46%, so overall we are doing well in this standard.

Secondly we will highlight the standard accounting. The TAX status of AIESEC in Belgium changed in September 2019 to being partially subject to VAT. Which means that as an organization we receive an exemption from paying VAT on our national conferences which benefits the delegate pricing for LCs and the financial sustainability of the conferences overall.

This gives us the chance to deliver higher quality conferences, since there is more budget to spend.

The percentage we as AIESEC in Belgium are currently reaching for accounting is 100%, this is one of the two standards in which we are reaching our full potential.

Thirdly, we will discuss the standard reporting. In August 2019, reporting had the lowest finance standards implementation with 64%. We decided as a main project for the financial department throughout the year to create a reporting system that was easily operated and accessible. This reporting tool would have three purposes:

1 Guidance

2 Precaution

3 Transparency In terms of guidance we wanted to improve the financial literacy in the entity and have constant clarity on the current state of every local committee. In order to anticipate the financial state of the entity precaution was especially important this to make future predictions and with that information the appropriate decisions. To make sure everyone would understand the state of all entities, we made sure the tool was automated and self-explanatory which simultaneously improve overall transparency.

The financial tool made on google sheets tracks Global Finance Board Report, Budget Excecution & Finance Standards. With that information it creates reports on profit & loss, detailed cost & revenue, a financial health score, revenue forecasting and product performance (goal achievement, profit per exchange & ROI). Currently we have achieved an implementation of 100% in reporting.

Fourthly, we will discuss the standard budgeting. With the financial history of AIESEC in Belgium our budget was initially planned on a modest profit on 15k. This anticipation changed quickly in march 2020 when we predicted a loss of almost 45k. Due to quick change management, cost cutting strategies and the performance of Business Development we were able to limit the loss to 30k.

Due to COVID-19, 7 out of 10 budgets were planned in loss. Exchange is our main revenue source, since international travel was restricted this had a big impact on our financial status and the financial status of the Local Committees.

The percentage we as AIESEC in Belgium are currently reaching for budgetting is 84.80%, this is one of the lowest percentage we are reaching at the moment.

Lastly, we will discuss the standard Auditing. The main bottleneck in auditing currently is the unqualified external audit which is holding AIESEC in Belgium back from regaining Global Membership. The audit has progressed to 2017, but we are still in a delay of 3-4 years.

There for this is the standard with the lowest percentage that we are reaching at the moment, namely 83%.

As stated in the beginning our main focus regarding legalilties was the Single Permit.

As AIESEC in Belgium we had a very beneficial agreement with the Federal government, called the work permit exemption which allowed us to give companies the possibility of hiring internationals without the need of a work permit. This freedom we were initially given in 2003 was unfortunately taken away in 2019 when work and residence permit were combined into one process, called the single permit. Negotiations with the Flanders started early 2019 and with Brussels in August 2019 to allow AIESEC the possibility of applying under the international agreement category. This would give us a high certainty of acceptance and lower the hiring cost for the company in certain circumstances. Ths change management required a close synergy between the legal and BD department to lower the risk of dropping in incoming traineeship results. From August 2019 onwards we have processed 15 single permit applications with a 100% success rate and an average processing time of 75 days.

Financially speaking this year was not one to be proud of. Due to COVID-19 a lot of our process were impacted and thus our finances. Eventhough this setback happened we worked as a team to still reach our full potential, for how far this was possible. This made it possible to still cut our loss to a lower point than reached in the year 1718 and 1617.

Radimhan Yandiev Head of Finance

Special thanks First of all a thank you to all of our stakeholders who put trust in us and our processes. It was an amazing year of collaboration.

We want to thank our Board of Advisors for giving us the guidance and critical input to grow and learn as a team.

Lastly, we want to thank our partners for their collaboration together.

AIESEC is for Life!

AIESEC is by far the largest and most international student association in the world and since its inception it has strived to work for Peace and for the fulfilment of humankind’s potential.

While it remains a student run association, managed by students

and serving the student population, the AIESEC philosophy and

fundamental principles become engrained in our personalities

and therefore persist throughout our professional and personal

lives as Alumni of AIESEC.

As such Alumni continue to feel and behave as an integral part of the

Association as reflected by their contribution to the student body, whether it

be in terms of internship generation, financial contribution or active

participation in Boards of Advisors (BoA) of different Local, National or

International entities.

Having been an elected Secretary General (now referred to as PAI) of AIESEC International (AI) – back in 1961! - I have been privileged to have been a member of the Supervisory Group of the AI and currently member of the BoA of AIESEC-Belgium.

From this perspective I have been very positively impressed by the way the Belgian operation has been run by dynamic, committed and courageous young but highly mature individuals.

The year has not been an easy one, particularly due to the impact the coronavirus has had on the realisation of traineeships and student exchanges with the consequent negative financial impact this has caused. Nevertheless, bold but necessary measures were taken to adapt and survive in the current and most unexpected environment.

These challenging times have further tightened the links between the Student and the Alumni student bodies proving – yet again – that AIESEC is for Life!

Victor Loewenstein Alumnus

Vision for the future Closing this year, the new team is already ready to start their term in August. The process of the new team already started in December. Firstly, we had the elections of the president of AIESEC in Belgium for 20.21: Elisabetta Castaldo.

Between January and May the rest of the team was selected to come and work for AIESEC in Belgium in the term 20.21. In the team there are:

Vlad Idita

Lefteris Lentarakis

Head of Outgoing Operations

Head of Human Resources

Caroline Ibrahim

Dhruvrajsinh Padheriya

Head of Incoming Operations

Head of Business Development

Maarten Hermans

Charlotte Opsomer

Head of Finance and Legal

Manager Business Development

Once the selection of the team was done, we started transition with the current team of AIESEC in Belgium. After this transition of knowledge from the current to the elect team, we started our planning process. This included 6 days of planning before the AIESEC international congress and 2 days after the AIESEC international congress.

During our planning we realized that next year will be about making the entity survive and thrive again after COVID-19. COVID-19 had quite an impact on AIESEC in Belgium and our sector. Moreover there is still a lot of uncertainty for the upcoming year about what will happen with COVID-19. Nevertheless, we are very excited, prepared, and hopeful about the future of AIESEC in Belgium.

During our planning process we defined what will be our priorities as a team. We would like to work on the three following priorities.

First of all, the financial sustainability of our organization.

Secondly, we want to create an exciting workplace for our members.

And finally we want to work on improving the customer experience for all our

stakeholders.

As a team we want to stand for Transparency, Authenticity, and Perseverance. We want to achieve this by

First, having open and clear communication inside our organization, but as well with

our stakeholders.

Second, leading by example.

And finally acting inclusively.

We hope that you are as excited for the future of AIESEC in Belgium as we are and hope to be able to work with you together in the future.

Elisabetta Castaldo Elected President

AIESEC in Belgium AIESEC in Belgium is a youth-run international non-profit organisation.

Located in Brussels, Belgium. This annual report will high light the most important accomplishments of AIESEC in Belgium in the year 2019-2020.

Adress: Antwerpselaan 40, 1000 Brussels Phone: +32 2 219 94 64 email: contact@aiesec.be