AIESEC University of Vienna
Winter Edition
Dear reader, Since it is now tradition, I deliver to you our seasonal special edition. This time the Winter Edition. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I did delivering this newsletter. The objective of this edition is to highlight the key events and news from the past 3 months and also to offer a space to all UV members to write down thier experiences, ideas, new projects, news or any kind of writen material. Please feel free to share this Newsletter with externals aswell, since it is a great opportunity to share our achievments and aswell share a taste of our organization. I speacially wish to thank Hebah and Jiya, from the amazing TOM team, since in only 24 hours they where able to gather and write really amazing content. Thanks to that this edition is probalby the biggest newsletter in UVs history, and also with most writers and people
involved from the whole LC. Characheristic which is a really positive improvement from the last one. Moving on, I urge all of you to send your feedbacks (via PODIO) to me or Hebah, in order to increase your experience and satisfaction in future editions. Finally, I wish all of you a Merry Christmas and aswell a Happy New Year... and most important.... may the force be with you =) Sincerely yours, Andres
5 Tips for Effective Communication by Advice Mallard 1. Stay Focused – Even though it might seem ing statements where the other party doesn’t like a good idea to bring up that one time when your brother mutilated your favorite Barbie or when your team member arrived two hours late to a meeting, it isn’t. Before you start listing seemingly related, past conflicts, stop and reevaluate whether your next sentence will help you find a solution to your current issue or whether it will only serve to send both parties off on irrelevant tangents.
feel cornered, such as “I get frustrated when the deadline is ignored” or “we have a tendency to
4. Look for compromise – Remember that the
goal of communication is to reach a common conclusion, not to simply vent or hold a monologue. If you really want to find a solution, stop thinking of a conversation as a battle arena with a winner and a loser or a quiz show with a right and wrong answer. You don’t have to 2. Listen Carefully – You know when you ran- compromise your values but let’s be honest, a domly see a friend after some time and they majority of the time, it’s not your values that ask you what you’re doing in that area and you are getting in the way, it’s the fact that you are respond with “I’m fine, how are you?” Yeah, 5. Take a time-out – Sometimes the only solution that’s because you think you know what peois that there is no solution. For the time being. ple are going to say and you have these default So if either party is digressing heavily from the answers prepared. We all do it but the problem topic, not willing to compromise, saying hurtful is, when we are thinking of what we are gothings, or just not ready to talk - walk away. It’s ing to say next instead of listening to the othnot always easy in the heat of the moment but tell er person, we are talking at each other rather them that you feel that you both still need time than to each other. This is where miscommuto rethink matters and it will allow you to calm nication stems from. Don’t interrupt and hear down and reassess everything instead of engagthem out, then and only then, can you take ing in emotional blame games. You will be the your sweet time to reply appropriately and better person for it. (Note: Do not abuse this.) they’ll be much more likely to listen to you.
3. Use “I” or “we” – Reconsider your use of pronouns because repeated use of statements such as “you ruined it” or “you didn’t send in your task on time and you’re unreliable” can only result in a negative backlash. Pointing fingers naturally makes people defensive and then they might just return the favor. Instead try us-
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UV President Dear UV members, This last semester has brought first of all : YOUour amazing new team members and team leaders who have put so much work into their teams and AIESEC Vienna UV! As I like to say, you guys make things happen in this LC, so thank you so much for all the effort and excitement you have invested in this organisation! To wrap up a bit what happened in the last 2 months: Since we are focusing on our outgoing programs this semester as well ( Global Talent and Global Citizen), promotion has started in force with the UR and COMM teams working hard to kick off promotion(achieving 41 applications so far) , while OGX matching team is organizing the interviews. Don’t forget to let any of your friends or colleagues know about our internships, everyone should have the chance to know and to apply! The sales teams picked up their phones and raised already a couple of meetings, and even signed contracts, we are all proud of them! Also, not to forget to mention the new events organized by UV such as Global Career © Focus Future (together with BOKU) , Instant Impact and thank to all the involved people who made them happen!
Our Talent Management team are the ones to thank for the team buildings and team goal sessions, as well as for all the coaching talks, @university trainings and socializing events (including LCMs). Last low 15 to
but not least, let’s not forget of our felAIESECers in Krems, with more than students and 4 main leaders eager open AIESEC there next semester!
Looking into the future , we have the VP applications coming up veery soon (keep an eye on the wiki on myaiesec.net : http://www. myaiesec.net/content/viewwiki.do?contentid=10287668 ) after the General Assembly has elected the new LCP of UV : Dorottya(Dori) Weiler ! Again , for the interested people, approach me , any of the VPs , Dori for any questions about the applications and the position. In the end , I wish you all happy holidays and an amazing new year !See you in January! Hugs, Ioana
COM
Finance Updates from Fiance: Finance area supports the whole LC in their processes: From OGX payments, ICX/ CR income to toilet paper, we help as much as we can. Btw: Pizza :P If you have any questions regarding budget etc. feel free to approach me (Mihai) --- I am not going to bite ;) Either way I wish you all Happy Holidays! And I hope that Santa Claus has a huge budget for your presents ;)
It has been without doubts a really interesting phew months. Now with the smallest team in the LC, it was full of challenges and rewards.
Super important noticement: Together with the VP applications we will open also OCP position (Organising Comitee President) for the following national conference: NatCo (May 2014),which will be organised by our LC. If you are curious to see what project management is, if you want to lead a 5 months team and improve your organizational skills, this position is for you. Applications will be closed at the end of this year. For any questions just approach Ioana or me (Mihai) or Hazan and Dori (both of them were OCPs and they can tell you what an awesome experience it is).
Second, the global career was succesfull, which helped to boost brand awareness and more applications at the same time.
Mihai,
First of all the new procesess are paying of, now we are delivering more appealing and persistent promotional material through the online channels, for instance just in December we got a really high number of Global Talent applications.
Third, with the implementation of the CoPro workspace, the joint trainings and the joint events, the CoPro triangle is begining to deliver synergies, key to the promotional and customer satisfaction in the whole chain until realization. Forth, an upcoming event is in preparation, which will target our must difficult market, Social Sciences, which is develped to show how relevant is AIESEC in those institutes. Fifth, our PR team is getting more know how from thier new experience, and I am sure, next year we will perform better in that area. All in all, I am really happy, specially for my awesome team and awesome Team leader, in which all the members made all this results possible! Andres
OGX The semester has been quite interesting in the Outgoing Exchange Area. Team Leaders have been working very hard together with BOKU on the quality experience of our exchange participants (EPs). Therefore Vienna UV got rewarded this year in our National conference for „The most customer centric Local Committee“ in AIESEC Austria! Nationally there has been the first cooperations and partnerships with other AIESEC countries established. They will make our overall quality raise even more by providing our EPs with ensured quality experiences. At the begining of the semester we had up to four Follow Up Seminar taking place, where we were able to listen to all the interns that had been abroad with us during this summer this year. The stories were great and the interns had very intense and incredible experiences in so many different countries and got to know what other opportunities they had in our local committee. To give two examples, Özgün and Anita, our lovely Team Leaders, were part of the Global Community Development Program, now called Global Citizen, during summer. After an amazing experience in Brazil and Turkey, they both decided to contribute to our local committee giving other students the great opportunity to be part of a social project or to get engaged in a corporate internship like they had done. After a great Local Induction conference in Budapest our three teams were ready to start working hard.
They invited interested people to our expectations alignment talks, where our members made sure to give right expectations towards these programs to a total of 25 students!! Now our members can start being awesome Buddys for this engaged people to get a fast, smooth and happy match with their most suitable internship. In the past few days, more EPs are getting access and are starting to look for their own opportunity for next semester! It seems like the christmas spirit in people and our big effort with the teams of University Relations and PR& Marketing to create the event for Global Career is having its results, because in the last two weeks we got 15 applications for our Global Citizen and Global Talent programs! Let´s make them happy and act according to our award, so that our customer satisfaction raises like it has never done before! As in socializing, there has been also an OGX event, where our lovely member Monika organized a punsch night in the area of Spittelberg and many members of other areas were happy to join to have a nice evening together! Thank you Monika for this and thanks to all the OGX team for all the effort during the semester!! Let´s keep our goals in mind and start the year 2014 with even bigger motivation and willingness to strive for the best in our area! I wish you all a nice time with your family, merry christmas and happy new year!! (or a nice break for those who dont celebrate it!) Sofia
UR Hello everyone! I and my team have been working a lot lately. This past couple of weeks, we have been working together with OGX and COMM on our event called Global Career. This event was held last December 11 and 12 at the university campus. Global Career was quite a success, with already 10 more students wanting to go on exchange with us. Aside from that we also had our info evening on the 9th December at UniRossau and our info stand on the 13th December at NIG. We also have new ideas coming for Promotion. Starting January, our Events team will hold individual Consulting Talks for students who are interested in going on Global Talent or Global Citizen. For info stands, we will show students our internship packages, which are detailed information about exchange opportunities with AIESEC. We will also have three more info stands coming on the following dates in January: • January 7: UniRossau • January 13: Institut für Publizistik & Informatik, Währingerstrasse • January 21: Institut für Publizistik & Informatik, Währingerstrasse
Our Expansions team is right now contacting organizations related to the university in order to expand our reach. They are also very involved in the LC and in our events. Our aim with what we do is to keep up with the customer-centric approach of our LC. The end goal of course is to engage more university students through Global Talent and Global Citizen. Stay tuned for more updates from our University Relations! Andre
ICX Hey UV! In the last months, Incoming Exchange was the area where the question marks have been. In AIESEC, we are planning each single step, it is always about the Who When What Why and Where and that we are prepared for what is coming up and we know, in which direction we are going and where we will leave our footprints. It turned out, that we needed another map. In AIESEC, we are learning by doing and we are learning while walking and following our path. And we finally know, where we want to see Incoming Exchange as a strong exchange and sales area. While procrastinating I found an old ICX Newsletter from our former MCVP Kelly about “How to capitalize on Opportunities” with some remarkable Links. In one of them I found a short description of the ideal Job:* So, what motivating factors should a job contain? • A range of responsibilities and activities to keep a person interested. • Areas of growth, since all jobs should be learning experiences. • Direct feedback, since how a person is doing should not be dependent upon someone else telling them — they should be able to see for themselves. • The responsibility for checking your own quality, because that responsibility cannot be delegated to a control system. • Direct communication between employees and the people they need to communicate with, not via supervisors or managers.
This is what we are striving for in ICX and this is something what I learned during the semester. In the last months we worked in iGCDP for getting the Project Colors of the World started which will be realized in February in a collaboration with WU and Boku. We also managed to have re-raises and a new approach for the NGO-market in having an event in January, getting an internship and raising money to support the fees. In GIP finally two Interns arrived until October (again a warm welcome to our lovely Interns ) and also the Intern for our Partner Metro got finally matched. Right now we have the matching process for LKW Walter and are still working in getting new partners. This week the Sales Academy will finally start and there is a huge potential in getting closer to the goal of the Sales Culture, as it will be for all participants a lot of work but also an amazing learning experience. Until then, we wish you Merry Christmas and hopefully many presents, filled with new Internships! *http://topsalesworld.com/topsalesmanagement/resources/new-age-sales-team-motivation-quality-of-work-life/
The project „FeelsLikeHome“ was started by three young entrepreneurs, who themselves have experienced the problems of having to build up a new life in a different country. This guide is meant to support all international students coming to Vienna. We are thankful for every support. Your FeelsLikeHome team!
National Partner
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Hello everyone! As “AIESEC University”, throughout this semester we have delivered some informative trainings about the topics selected by you dear AIESECers; such as ‘Leadership Skills’ and ‘Public Speaking’. But I would like to talk about the very last one we had. Now let me wrap up our instructional and interactive training about ‘Self-Branding & Selling Skills’ delivered by Toni Kronke, “Teach for Austria”. The training first began with ‘Pitch Methods’, where we actually saw the Golden Circle –why/ how/what we do- and tried to implement it in our own pitches! At first it seemed so simple for everyone, trying to pitch, striving to convince someone to work with you, but then things changed, where the 30 seconds countdown showed up… All of us were supposed to do our own pitches, by telling ‘Why does my organization exist?’, ‘What am I pitching?’, and ‘How am I pitching?’ within these 30 seconds!! Then the trainer added one more bullet point to the pitch, the ‘stakeholder’, which was questioned by, ‘Who am I talking to?’,
still 30 seconds. Things were getting harder, then another question. ‘Why am I talking to you?’, still 30 seconds… But you don’t convince a CEO this way in real life, right? You either give your business card, or exchange numbers. Now we had to add that little ‘Call us if you’re interested’ or ‘This is an invitation for our meeting’ part to our pitch too! And guess what? Now everything in 15 seconds! It might seem a little mission impossible, but everyone managed to do it! Now all of us have an idea of doing our pitch, selling our ideas, and making someone interested about what we are saying by getting the attraction and convincing them to work with us. @UNI, Internal Education Responsible, Ipek Kenaroglu
AIESEC coaching talks
from a coach’s understanding Hebah Nigm (Communications Responsible,“Talent Management”)
AIESEC is an organisation run by a team of motivated, young students, who made it their goal to develop themselves, in order to become responsible and entrepreneurial leaders, who want to achieve something together and thus contribute to today’s society. AIESEC believes in the ability of new generations to shape and change the world. How to make this possible? Through supporting the potential of each individual. Only if you are aware of your strengths and weaknesses, your talents and potential, the way you present yourself and the way you are seen by people - only then you can set yourself goals that are realistic and achievable. And only if you set yourself goals and strive for their achievement, you can be a responsible leader of the future, aiming to take action and That’s why AIESEC provides these individual coaching talks, in which the individual goals and the potential of each AIESECer should be put into perspective. We want people to find out things about themselves, they didn’t know before and profit out of them in the best way possible. This should be provided, not only through projects and trainings provided for developing soft skills, but also on a personal and individual basis, through coaching talks. They are not only about finding out about yourself and constructing a realistic plan of your future, they are also a means of ensuring the peaceful and effective atmosphere within AIESEC’s community. Every organization has its own problems and struggles within its community and in AIESEC that’s not different. But what’s different is that in AIESEC, we believe in the necessity of addressing and facing these difficulties together, in order to get stronger as a unit, as a team. This is only given through an open communication and trust within the community. In order to provide these, every single member of AIESEC is provided a coach, who functions as a contact person within the organization and carries the responsibility of supporting and engaging in each person’s struggles, be they within or outside the community. AIESEC isn’t just defined by its projects, events and achievements. AIESEC is defined by the individuals, who make these things happen. That’s why we see it as our responsibility to provide a feeling of trust and support within the community, by doing these individual coaching talks As a coach myself, I can tell you that it is definitely not an easy job to help another person see something in themselves, they don’t realize they have. The trick is to lead them to finding out for themselves, instead of just telling them about the potential YOU see in them. Even if it wasn’t an easy job I can assure you that I am happy to have been given the opportunity to do these coaching talks. I got to talk to great people, who all had their own very individual stories to tell, which shaped the goals they set for themselves. The magic about these coaching talks is not only the great feeling of having helped someone see their own potential and thus understand themselves better, but also what you can learn about YOURSELF. Communicating is one of the main key skills along the road to becoming a successful leader, but I believe that listening is an equally crucial skill a responsible.
Congratulations!
Have you bought your t-shirt yet? No? What Madness! Fret not, this can be rectified in three simple steps: Step 1. Make your way to the UV office. By now you can probably sleepwalk there so no directions needed. Step 2. Locate the closest VP and tell them your size. Step 3. In exchange for ten Euros, be the proud owner of this year’s truly unique, one-of-a-kind, brilliant article of sartorial magnificence!
Christmas LCM Dear reader! AIESEC is continuing to develop its members every meeting, whenever official or entertaining! At the same time, a characteristic environment, and cross-cultural communication, which you can find in AIESEC, is that its members, always create a nice, warm and friendly atmosphere even when they have to discuss serious organizational matters. The last Local Committee Meeting of AIESEC UV of this year, which took place on the 18th of December.discussed the current state of actions in OGX promotion, forwarded by the announcement of our new LCP elect, Dorottya Weiler on her future EB structure. Afterwards we discussed how to keep high quality standards, for which our committee was given an award of ‘the most client centric committee’. Finally, taking into consideration the upcoming Christmas holidays, the official part of our meeting was finished by an awesome party! We were having hot wine, chocolate & snacks, shared hugs, warm emotions, doubled joy and happiness, and divided sorrow. Our friendship became closer, our passion was increased, motivation and inspiration re-established! Because we are AIESEC, we are the love generation! That's why, reader, on behalf of everyone, I wish you only the warmest feelings during these holidays! Share love with your relatives and friends! Let yourself feel joy and happiness every second of your life, let it be shared, and our planet will become peaceful, our potential will be fulfilling! Merry Christmas! Sincerely Yours, Seva Shchepanskyi
Focus Future Team has worked hard in order to organise a great event and build up a solid basis to make the event next year even greater. And we are proud to announce that we did it!!! lecture presenters and AIESECers who took part as OC-on-Site, we managed to create a positive and productive atmosphere during the event. Our team was a mix of AIESEC UV and BOKU, which positively affected the preparation process and made it diverse. Next year, BOKU LC will take over the organisation of Focus Future but maybe if we would be nice and friendly if UV we will get a chance to be there as participants or as a part of OC-on-Site Team :) Now we are working on a Focus Future Report which will be a great communicational tool for maintaining contact with our former partners and establishing new ones with our potential partners, future participants and Focus Future Team 2014. Big thanks to everybody who made this event possible and lets get excited about how it will shape up next year! Cheers, Iryna Focus Future Team
My dearest UV members, Global Career was an initiative of COMM, an initiative that took flight with UR and OGX help. This event combined two main promotional campaigns, a social media campaign based on finding the student´s picture with most likes (the winner had 120 likes) which led to 5.000 people in reach through Facebook, and in second place, a two day career event in the heart of the University of Vienna. In my opinion, it was a succesful event, which led to 7 applications in a week (still more to come) mostly in Global Talent and also led to more brand awareness in the overall university. From my side, I really wish to thank to all the participants, not only from the promotional teams but as well to all the members in the LC who supported with ideas and their hard work during the event. Yours sincerely, Andres
Any idea who won the “Best Team Leader„ award in the National Conference?
Congratulations!
Spotlight: LC Krakow member Marzena Antolak Name: Marzena Antolak Age: 20 Field of study: Management and Public Administration 1) My position in AIESEC: I joined AIESEC one month ago so I am member of team. I have a great leader! 2) LC: Krakow (Poland) ; My Local Committee is awesome! People are open and full of new ideas. I think I will find new friends! Our LC has a lots of great project. Everything is running smoothly. I'm very lucky that I can be a part of this LC. 3) Why did I join: I joined because I wanted do something more in my life. I thought that AIESEC is an amazing opportunity to develop my qualifications, gain new knowledge and meet amazing people. 4) My AIESEC moment: I joined only a month ago so I don't have a lots of moments. But the first conference was something AMAZING. I could meet this people and saw how it works, saw that there are so many things I want to do and goals which I want to reach. It was very motivating! 5) My favourite place in this city: I love this city! I met amazing people and have a good University. I'm proud that I chose this city. There are a lots of amazing places where you can go to concerts, wonderful cafes and bars, If you come here I will take you to the best dessert! White chocolate with strawberries. I love it! :) 6) My favourite thing to do in this city: Meeting with my friends. We always try to find new cafes, bars and restaurants. We want to try new dishes and drinks. We have favourite place ! Definitely! We also go to concerts! We love music and couldn't imagine life without. Now we want to experience new things so we will go to museums :) 7) Lesson learned in the past year: I learned that you could have a lots of money, cars and houses, but you're nothing without important people for you. I know that I can be happy because I have my best friends. They let me be happy! :) 8) Leadership means: Leadership is very huge responsibility. I'm not ready for it! I have to learn. control, accuracy. Maybe some day :) 9) Biggest passion: Music! I couldn‘t imagine life without music. One day I want to start a business which will be to organise music events: concerts and festivals 10) If I could change one thing in the world: I would like to see more smiles. In my opinion, people should smile much more! :) Best regards, COCO =)
r u o m o ! r f s r s r e e b t t m e e L m V U y l love
Dear AIESEC community,
Colors of the World 2014,
AIESEC has visions: leadership, self - development, get out of the comfort zone and so on. But how could we unite the visions in order to have an impact on social issues? As R. Carter proposed: “A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be.” I therefore thought of the project Cooking for the Homeless. It is a project where we step out of our comfort zone, in order to support others. Especially those, who suffer from poverty. It is not just about being hungry and homeless. The greatest poverty is about being unwanted, unloved and uncared. With the Project Cooking for the Homeless I want to cause a development not only in us, but also in those, who feel uncared and useless. We as AIESECers, as leaders, should stand out of the crowd – act as an inspiring example! Cooking for the homeless is going to take place once a month at the Gruft in Vienna. We are going to cook either lunch or dinner for 180 people (main course + dessert). Who? – every AIESECer is able to join the team! How? – come to the next meeting in January (on Podio you find the report from the last meeting – public workspace: cooking for the homeless) When? – starting January 2014 In order to provide the meals we have to raise money to buy food. Therefore I ask YOU – GREAT LEADERS to think of options how we could raise money in order to support others! (e.g sell leadership workshops to schools and companies,..) And keep in mind: “alone we can do so little, together we can do so much” – H. Keller I am very excited to realize the Project Cooking for the Homeless with the support of my awesome AIESEC UV community.
Listen up, you guys! There’s gonna be a really sweet CoW this year! For everybody who doesn‘t know: it’s a project held on vienna’s schools by a bunch of lucky EPs starting february ending in april, organised by ICX GCDP people! It’s about cultural awareness, global issues and all that cool AIESEC related stuff which should get little school-kids all psyched up to grow up and join AIESEC, go abroad or just walk up to the nearest foreign looking person and talking to them (aside from a whole bunch of fun of course, duh)!
Merry Christmas to everyone and thank you for your support! - Anna
But people, there is a dark cloud on the otherwise blue sky of CoW: holidays means people missing who we need so dearly to tell schools to do CoW! So if you should be available in the time after Christmas (6. January onwards) please let our lovely VP ICX Dana (the tall, blonde German) now and she will love you for that! There should be no more reason not to do this!
Thanks Guys and Gals! -Christoph Bernleitner, TL ICX GCDP
Events,
Instant Impact,
Whether it was the kick-off party at Haus Panorama at the start of the term, the BoL visit to the Schnapsmuseum, the OGX social at the Christmas market, AIESEC Vienna’s attending the free screening of the Hobbit - The Desolation of Smaug, or the Christmas party, a great time was had by all so far this term but the question is, what sort of activities would you like to take part in starting in the new year?
Instant Impact is the innovation of the AIESEC-term 2013, which already landed a great success in getting people engaged about social projects they care about. Seeing that everyone is so motivated in participating and supporting ideas our members share, tops any previous expectations in the first place! So don’t quit being awesome and caring and continue to rock hard!
Cease this opportunity to inform your TOM team whether you’d like to have an International Food and Drinks event, a movie night, a game night, go rock climbing, or a scavenger hunt!
Especially in the holidays if you feel left all alone and stuck in Vienna because everybody has fled this godforsaken winter-stricken country, don‘t despair – use Instant Impact to do good and unite all those lonely AIESEC souls to actually do fun stuff!
We will try our best to make it happen, after all, we aim to please :D.
Also there is a big question about the Instant Impact logo and merchandise that we’re gonna be using to represent us! Everybody is invited to participate in a contest on who comes up with the coolest logo-design and ideas for „merchandise“, that will be presented in the first or second LCM after the holidays! So get your creative brain juices flowing and come up with something cool here, because this idea will be around future AIESEC generations to come! They will be like: „who was that mastermind who came up with such a fresh logo??“ The winner will also get a surprise!!!
Your TOM Team
Christoph Bernleitner, TL ICX GCDP
Links to make you think!
Hi everybody,
Brainpickings.org - “The useless days will add up to something...These things are your becoming.”
Hi everybody, I wanted to share something from my experience abroad. For those who don‘t know me (which is quite a lot of people by now), I entered UV one year ago and right now I‘m in Buenos Aires for my exchange semester at university and I decided to join one of the LCs here in the city.
Thersa.org/events/rsaanimate - An innovative to illustrate and present world-changing ideas. Ted.com/playlists/77/new_to_ted.html - If you’re new to TED talks or want to just discover new talks and don’t know where to start, these playlists were made for you! Your TOM Team
Quotes, „With realization of one´s own potential and self-confidence in one´s ability, one can build a better world.“ (Dalai Lama) Or maybe, since during Christmas, conflicts arise in many families: „When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That‘s the message he is sending.“ (Thich Nhat Hanh)
Francy
I was told that AIESEC here would be totally different: for starters they speak Spanish, they have a different LC structure, different approaches, different AIESEC culture and events, also a different reality. But some things just don‘t change all over this global network, which is first of all the amazing energy everybody is having and the effort everybody‘s taking. For example yesterday we had a party and at some point, they always play roll calls (every time I‘m surprised of how many there are) and I didn‘t know any of them, except one! This video will show you, that even if we‘re geographically apart from each other as AIESECers in the world, we‘re still one organization and can do great things together. Everybody, see you soon and I miss you over here! https://www.facebook .com/pho to.php?v=10202789387841849&set=o.270090806361651&type=2&theater
Lisa Less
Anita´s experience, About 2 months ago I was writing to share my summer experience. I was writing from the perspective of a student, who went abroad with AIESEC and got culture shocked in Istanbul, Turkey. I can say that my internship in Istanbul and being part of the Myself My World ’13 was a turning point in my life, which helped me gain a lot of knowledge and friends for life all around the world. I discovered things about me and others that I would have never known are there. Most important I rediscovered the joy of volunteering and doing things out of passion without expecting anything in return. But today I am writing from a totally different perspective. Today I am part of the Outgoing Exchange (OGX) team in AIESEC Vienna UV, the team who contributed and made my whole experience possible. I can say now that OGX made it possible for me to gain a totally different perspective about myself and the people and world around me. It might all sound cheesy, but I am and I will be always thankful to this team. And now I am part of it, because I want to make it possible for others to have the same experience that I had or even a better one. There are so many opportunities out there, so many places to see and so many people to meet, so it is a pity not to take advantage of this and simply go abroad and make the best out of it. So you might ask yourself what OGX is doing? In a really imaginary way I might say, we change lives, people and the world. We offer adventure and experiences which might get you out of your comfort zone sometimes, but you know: „LIFE BEGINNS AT THE END OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE.“
I would say it might seem all very utopic and impossible to reach, but I can say from my own experience that you never know how many lives you can touch even without realizing it. In a really realistic and professional way I might say, that OGX is offering the support for students who want to volunteer or start their professional career abroad. We are there through all the experience, just to make sure it will be meeting the expectations we set at the beginning. Before the internship we set expectations, during the internship we are there – even if you might not see us – making sure everything is fine and we move towards our goals. After you come back, we are here waiting to see the change and eager for feedback. This is what makes us “the most customer centric entity in Austria” and we were rewarded for this – so it is a proven fact. I can’t promise OGX is doing magic, but with a bit of AIESEC, a bit more of OGX, openness, curiosity, flexibility, interculturality and a lot of passion, you have the main ingredients for a life-changing experience. Anita Theil (Team Leader OGX Global Talent)