Annual Report 2009 / 2010
Coordinator: Melinda Bajai Content Responsible: Lucía Marquina Photo Responsible: Erna Begovic Layout & Design: Philipp Franz Freidl Photos: BEST Photos Authors: Michele Alberti, Gorana Bosic, Vladimir Bulgaru, Salvador Caetano, Victor Costa, Robert Cserti, Laura Dimitrijeva, Liis Elmi, Rafael Feito Kiczak, Alexandre Florentin, Vlad Gliga, Raluca Gramschi, Inna Granishevs‘ka, Damien Isaie, Christophe Jouret, Peter Kun, Teele Kundla, Sergei Lakissov, Cristina Lupea, Diana Andrea Manta, Desireé Marín, Jorge Mateus, Nikola Milivojevic, Zsolt Molnar, Magdalena Nastase, Ira Oliynyk, Iustina Pop, Ana Relva Pereira, Lucien Romagnoli, Luna Sánchez, Vasilij Savin, Aleksandra Sovdat, Aleix Torres, Andres Ütt, Jasper Van Bourgognie, Alexander Vladimirov
Table of Contents 4
Welcome word from the XXII Board
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Public Relations Project
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BEST Identity, Mission and Vision
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Communication with BESTies
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Stakeholders of BEST
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Services Evaluation Workshop
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Management of BEST
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Structure Evaluation
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Committees of BEST
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Growth Strategy project
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List of LBGs and their Presidents
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Usability project
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BEST Courses
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International Projects’ Forum 2010
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BEST Leisure Events
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Virtual International Plenary
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BEST Events on Education
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Presidents’ Meeting Lviv
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Debate in Warsaw
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General Assembly Warsaw
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Testimonial from José Carlos Quadrado (SEFI)
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General Meetings
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Knowledge management in BEST
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Educational Involvement 26
Training system in BEST
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Professional life after BEST
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Cooperations
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European Commission
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Trainers’ Forum
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Financial Report
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BEST Career Support Local career events’ page BEST University Center
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BEST Engineering Competitions
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European BEST Engineering Competition 2010
Draft for the Design Version 3.1 The Honeybee!
Annual Report 2009 / 2010 Annual Report 2009 / 2010
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Welcome word from the XXII Board 58 000! That is the amount of students benefiting from BEST services all over Europe. BEST started its third decade of existence and it has never been as strong and innovative. This annual report shall show you how our organisation brings students, universities and companies closer together while creating opportunities for all of them. All of the work is done for students and by students and we aim to enlarge the horizon of students of technology. During their education they can take part in our programmes, organise themselves or develop new services. Society needs young people who can adapt to a changing environment and are used to multicultural encounters and teamwork to tackle the challenges of today’s market. BEST programs create a framework where students can fully develop those skills while creating the basis to do the same for other students. Different bodies of BEST shape our future. Each pebble is a possible start of new ways to empowered diversity, of new opportunities for
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our stakeholders and of skilled professionals ready to match the expectations of the professional world. Throughout the last year, existing programmes have been strengthened and internal working methods have been optimised. In order to remain competitive and match the expectations of our stakeholders new contacts have been established with bodies of higher education and other students NGOs with different fields of expertise. Additionally we developed tools for dissemination of our internal and external work. Where ever young people meet new ideas are born, stories are lived and friendships are formed which last for a life time. We, the XXII International Board of BEST, wish you a pleasant journey in this Annual Report, discovering BEST, its developments and the results of the work done the daily passion of students from all corners of Europe. Yours truly, The XXII International Board of BEST
Board of European Students of Technology
BEST Spirit • Flexibility • Friendship • Learning • Improvement • Fun
BEST Identity, Mission and Vision V I S I O N - Empowered diversity People understand and respect different cultures and societies. The environment of empowered diversity supports people in applying their full potential and acting responsibly.
Annual Report 2009 / 2010
M I S S I O N - Developing students BEST helps students to achieve an international mindset, to reach a better understanding of cultures and societies and to develop the capacity to work in culturally diverse environments. BEST creates opportunities for personal development of students and supports them in reaching their full potential.
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Stakeholders of BEST BEST aims to develop and maintain a multilateral cooperation between its three stakeholders: students, companies and universities. The ultimate vision of BEST empowered diversity - is strived for by fostering an efficient communication between these parties. Students from all member universities have the unique opportunity to develop their interpersonal and academic skills in a multicultural environment due to the significant amount of BEST courses organised each year. During these courses professors can practice new teaching methods and gain the experience of working with students from different cultures. At the
same time partner companies are welcome to deliver case studies, organise company visits and lectures. Thereby they achieve personal contact with the students and can recognise the qualities which are needed for their possible future employment. Members from all Local BEST Groups contribute actively to organise these events and facilitate the communication between European educational institutions and students. The purpose of their work is to bring the „students-companiesuniversities“ triangle closer together. The managerial skills gained as a BEST member have proven to be beneficial for the students later in their professional lives.
Management of BEST BEST is a big organisation, present in 30 countries and gathering 5800 members involved in the day-to-day development of our services and its quality. In order to manage this big network and to ensure coherence of all the activities the management of BEST monitors and manages all fields of activities. All members of the management of BEST are students and members of Local BEST Groups. Their mandate lasts for one year, their activity is voluntary and they are driven by their motivation. The management consists of the International Board and the Coordinators of the BEST Committees.
The Coordinators of the BEST Committees ensure the coherence of activities of their committee and other bodies, set the aims for the future, monitor the existing projects in which their committee is involved in and take care of continuity of the committee itself. There are six Coordinators for the six Committees of BEST: Educational, Financial, External Events, Training, IT and Marketing.
The International Board represents BEST, ensures a good communication between the different bodies of BEST and facilitates the global development of programmes and activities. It consists of President, Secretary, Treasurer, Vice-President for External Services, Vice-President for Internal Support and Vice-President for Local Group Support.
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Board of European Students of Technology
Committees of BEST Educational Committee The Educational Committee (EduCo) strives to increase technology students’ awareness of educational matters and to collect individual point of views and ideas from students, the academic world and companies. The different opinions can be expressed during BEST Events on Education and in conducted surveys and are transmitted to European higher education stakeholders through reports and presentations at conferences on European engineering education. External Events Committee The External Events Committee (EEC) develops the complementary education programme provided by BEST to students.Thus, EEC coordinates more than 100 external BEST events such as courses, competitions or leisure events. EEC aims to assure and improve the quality of the events by the continuous support given to Local BEST Groups through materials, contact persons and other means. BEST Corporate Relations BEST Corporate Relations is the committee that takes care of the cooperation between BEST and international companies. The aim of the team of members interested in the corporate relations is to offer career opportunities to European engineering students while ensuring the needs of our partners. With BEST Career Support and 3 Company Days organised per year, BEST Corporate Relations achieves a direct contact between our stakeholders. Information Technology Commitee The Information Technology Committee (ITC) fulfils the need of a sustainable and easily maintainable IT infrastructure in BEST. ITC implements the latest methodology in terms of interaction design, follows best practices in software engineering and takes care of server stability and security. The members of ITC have the unique opportunity to participate in various exciting projects and to develop their technical skills. Marketing Commitee The Marketing Committee of BEST (markeTeam) develops and implements marketing strategies in order to ensure coherent communication towards all stakeholders of BEST. mT ensures the visibility of BEST by constantly maintaining the existing marketing materials as well as applying new promotion methods. In addition, mT is preserving and expanding the number of media contacts along with monitoring the image of BEST. Training Group The Training Group (TiGro) manages the training system and the community of trainers of BEST. The goal of TiGro is to help students to develop through non formal education within local training sessions as well as long training events on specific topics such as leadership, marketing, HR, etc. TiGro is also responsible for the training of new trainers every year and ensure their personal development throughout the years.
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List of LBGs and their Presidents Full Members LBG Almada
Hugo Barona
LBG Ankara
Emre Arcan
LBG Athens
Ioanna Tsami
LBG Louvain-la-Neuve
LBG Barcelona
Desiree Marin
LBG Lund
LBG Belgrade
Momcilo Kovac
LBG Lviv
LBG Brasov LBG Bratislava LBG Brno LBG Brussels LBG Brussels ULB
Martin Cief Jonatanh Jose Ibarra Manu Van Leuvenhaege Sophie Bellouti
LBG Lodz
LBG Madrid LBG Madrid Carlos III LBG Maribor LBG Milan LBG Moscow
Aleksander Djurka Lukasz Galecki Thibault François Mia Hagelin Dariy Solskyy Jorge Casado Esteras Eduardo Alonso Tornos Janez Mevc Valerio Oliana Nataliya Mishukova
LBG Bucharest
Mihai Stroe
LBG Nancy
Pierre Gierens
LBG Budapest
Bálint Pogátsa
LBG Naples
Dario Salvucci
LBG Nis
Ivana Ivanovic
LBG Chania LBG Chisinau LBG Cluj-Napoca LBG Coimbra LBG Copenhagen
Dimitris Afentoulis Anton Binzari
LBG Novi Sad LBG Paris, Ecole Centrale
Angelos Cacouros
Claudia Moniz
LBG Paris, Polytechnique
Younes Chajia
Christoffer Lythcke
LBG Patras
Badr Echdid
LBG Porto
LBG ENSTA
Pierre Amiot
LBG Reykjavik
LBG Eindhoven
Rob Mensink
LBG Riga
LBG Ekaterinburg, USTU LBG Gdansk
Aleksandar Savic
Anca Fulger
LBG ENSAM
LBG Ekaterinburg
Ekaterina Dvuhimennaya Ksenia Gaydukova Radoslaw Miszewski
LBG Rome LBG Rome, Tor Vergata LBG Skopje
Aggelos Chasiotis José Santos Thordu Ingi Gudmundsson Laura Dimitrijeva Lorenzo Di Ciaccio Lorenzini Francesco Elena Bošeska
LBG Ghent
Jeffrey Callewaert
LBG Sofia
Vasil Bachev
LBG Gliwice
Magdalena Hasnik
LBG Stockholm
Johan Dutina
LBG Gothenburg LBG Graz
Sina Saremi Robin Waluschnig
LBG Supélec
Sten Seppo Jermu Pulli
Arnaud Gloppe
LBG Tampere
LBG Helsinki
Kai Bredenberg
LBG Thessaloniki
LBG Istanbul LBG Istanbul, Yildiz LBG Kaunas LBG Kiev
Raluca Gramschi Okan Laçin Selahattin Yücel Lina Liutkute
Vincent Szaleniec
LBG Tallinn
LBG Grenoble LBG Iasi
LBG Timisoara LBG Trondheim LBG Turin LBG Uppsala
Thalia Christaki Andrei Mituca Jone Rivrud Rygg Luca Dell‘Anna Karin Vendt
Anastasiia Mishchuk
LBG Valladolid
Magali Antolín
LBG Kosice
Adela Tusanova
LBG Veszprem
Sandor Mészáros
LBG Krakow
Grzegorz Medrek
LBG Vienna
LBG Leuven
Koen Hoornaert
LBG Warsaw
Maciej Matejek
LBG Zagreb
Goran Markovic
LBG Liege LBG Lisbon
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Mihai Marian
LBG Ljubljana
Lionel Paternoster Dominique Silva
LBG Zaporizhzhya
Pia Liszt
Daryna Kruty
Board of European Students of Technology
Baby Members
Observers
Baby LBG Aveiro
Samuel Oliveira
Observer Faro
Baby LBG Delft
Michiel Maassen
Observer Miskolc
Peter Takacs
Baby LBG Izmir
Cem Uslusoy
Observer Prague
Karel Simek
Baby LBG Messina
Adelino Venturinha
Daniele Pino
Baby LBG Saint Petersburg
Liudmila Gamidova
Baby LBG Wroclaw
Agnieszka Sarlinska
Suspended Suspended LBG Aalborg
Morten Egestrand
Suspended LBG Lyon
Patrick El Khoury
Saint Petersburg
Delft
Wroclaw Krakow
Aveira Izmir
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BEST Courses The BEST programme of complementary education is one of the oldest and most important projects of BEST, aiming to broaden the knowledge of European students of technology, mainly in the field of technology, but also in other areas that can contribute to their personal development. The BEST Courses are divided in BEST Courses on Technology and BEST Courses on Career Related Skills. In this way BEST Courses can have various subjects, which attract many students and enhance the participants’ knowledge in a way that complements the education provided by their own universities. In the last years young engineers started to understand more and more that for a successful career not only technical knowledge is required but also additional nontechnical knowledge like in economics or law is beneficial. Thus, with every new season BEST offers new opportunities for students of technology to get in touch with these subjects through BEST Career Related skills Courses. The BEST Course named “Anything you want, just convince me! - Course on presentation, argumentation and teamwork” organised by LBG Belgrade this spring is a great example for such an event. The Local BEST Groups strive for a huge variet y of creative topics and academic programmes for the organised BEST
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Courses on Technology. For example, the Local BEST Group Novi Sad organised the BEST Course “beCeramical” where students had the opportunit y to acquire knowledge about applied inorganic materials and ceramics. During the course the par ticipants designed and manufactured their own ceramic tile and finally mounted it on the fountain in the centre of the universit y area, like a real ceramic master. In the end of each course students take an exam or prepare project presentation and receive certificates that prove their learning outcomes and the gained knowledge. The number of universities which recognise the BEST Courses’ academic programme increases each year.
Board of European Students of Technology
BEST Leisure Events The history of BEST and together with it the history of its main services – BEST Courses counts already more than 20 years. With each year the number of interesting stories connected to BEST Courses gets more and more. One of these great stories includes the Local BEST Group (LBG) Ekaterinburg which created a real history of BEST Leisure events in Russia Since 1991, along with big number of academic events, LBGs have organised BEST Leisure events. These events focus on sports, hiking and other social activity and aim to give students of technology the opportunity to get to know different cultures and lifestyles of young people all round Europe as well as get some physical trainings in the holiday period and improve their health level before the new semester of studying starts. Once upon a time in far 2005, after lots of travelling, two BEST members of LBG Ekaterinburg came to their LBG with a bright idea about a cultural Leisure Event for students
Annual Report 2009 / 2010
of BEST universities in Russian summer. They thought that it shouldn’t be in hot and dusty Ekaterinburg city. When asking „Where else?“, they remembered the traditional Russian way of relaxing in the nature: by rafting on the calm and beautiful river Chusovaya, by being far away from any civilization, by just leaving into the wild nature with experienced instructors. The event was named Be4 – “Boats between birds and bears”. During the first event traditional rituals and competitions such as singing near the open fire and competing in downhill boat races were created. After the first successful event the LBG got addicted to this kind of events and since that time they have organised four more leisure summer events: Be5, Be6, Be7, Be8 in a row. Today, after 5 years of existence of BeX Leisure Events, they have become a trade mark of LBG Ekaterinburg and definitely have become part of the whole BEST history of external events for students.
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BEST Events on Education One of the services provided by BEST to students is the opportunity to participate in discussions regarding educational matters. This is achieved through BEST Events on Education. BEST Events on Education are international events organised by local groups with the help of EduCo where students from different European technical universities meet, discuss important issues, related to engineering education, participate in workshops organised by partners and sponsoring projects. That allows students to put their educational system into international context, learn more about higher education systems in other countries and get inspired to become more involved in their educational system, to generate new ideas and ways to improve quality of their education. There are two types of Events on Education: BEST Symposium on Education and BEST Academics and Companies Forum (BACo). While a Symposium addresses mostly academic topics in discussions between students and professors, BACos expand the scope of topics by putting an emphasis on the industrial side
of engineering education and by bringing corporate stakeholders to the discussion table. Members of Educational Committee participate in Events on Education as discussion moderators, represent BEST in European projects on Engineering Education and attend educational conferences and presenting outcomes of our discussions. The input taken from students is summarised in reports, which are available on the official BEST website. The outcomes are also presented at various European Engineering Education conferences and workshops in order to be implemented in the higher education reform. The current hot topics being discussed are the attractiveness of the engineering field, the idea of virtual internships, student entrepreneurship and gender issues in the engineering.
Debate in Warsaw During each BEST General Meeting Educational Committee (EduCo) prepares workshops on topics relating to higher engineering education in Europe. This year, at General Assembly (GA) in Warsaw, EduCo facilitated two debates entitled “Ideas factory� with the main topics creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. Within the first workshop participants developed ideas on how to improve the boundary conditions for creativity and innovation within the working environment or at university. For the entrepreneurship topic, the participants were split into three groups and each group developed a business concept during the GA. The three concepts were then presented to all participants of the event and the best idea was awarded.
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Board of European Students of Technology
Testimonial from José Carlos Quadrado (SEFI) As an active engineering educator operating at global level I could not overlook the work of BEST, Board of European Students of Technology, as a truly non-profit and non-political organization. While aiming to provide communication, co-operation and exchange possibilities for students all over Europe, it contributes for the all-round development of the student, while providing a host for various pertinent students’ activities. In my opinion, student bodies like BEST are fundamental for the engineering education continuous improvement, cumulatively it helps the students to explore their hidden talents but also help in areas such as personality development and inculcating in the students the spirit of organization by providing them with a platform for hosting their respective actions. As a vibrant organization of young leaders in the field of technology it should deepen the off-the-box thinking to provide new solutions for problems in this field, existent and new.
Currently, we are counting with the help from BEST to transform the 2011 SEFI’s student year into an opportunity to make the world of engineer educators that the students can really help improving the learning process. Moreover BEST efforts are fundamental to transforming the Lisbon, 1st world flash week of engineering education, into a new model of discussing these issues where the students’ representation is equal to the one from the educators. My last words are to encourage all engineering students to become an active member of student bodies like BEST to help broaden their horizons. José Carlos Quadrado Vice-president European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI)
Educational Involvement The cooperation of BEST with educational partners as well as its educational invlovement started in 1996 with an invitation by SEFI and CESAER to join them in setting up the H3E Thematic Network under the European Community’s SOCRATES-programme.
BEST is proud of the work done with its partners and hopes that their continuous trust means they appreciate the cooperation as well.
Since then BEST was invited to join further Thematic Networks like TREE, ReVE, EU-ViP, StartPRO or EuroPACE and has cooperated with various entities and associations. In most cases, BEST is and was the only student organisation involved.
Annual Report 2009 / 2010
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BEST Career Support BEST Career Support (BCS) is a virtual platform that connects BEST partners with technology and engineering students from all over Europe, creating a synergy that brings benefits to both entities and generates development. The platform allows interested students to access directly information about career opportunities and graduate programs provided by our partners. The students also have the opportunity to create a BEST account and fill in their CV on-line according to the European standard model. A support on CV writing and job search techniques is also provided within the BCS. This service becomes popular among students looking for career opportunities, and the CV database is growing on a daily basis, rapidly approaching 19.000 submitted CV from students
and experienced graduates. Detailed search criteria make it easy for companies to browse through the database efficiently and to find the candidates who meet their requirements. Through their BEST account, students can also subscribe to career newsletters from our partners, to receive information about job offers, internships and special programmes. This year the number of subscribers for the newsletter reached 24.000 and the number keeps on growing. The selected search criteria apply here as well, ensuring that the newsletters arrive at the students who are interested in that particular opportunity. The job offers, internships and special programmes can also be posted in the career section of our external web page, which is frequently visited by students and graduates.
Local career events’ page The Local Career Events page is the meeting point for companies and the Local BEST Groups. This is where any Local BEST Group publish the upcoming career events in which companies can participate. For the companies it is possible to get all the information about various events such as company presentations, job fairs, case studies and academic courses taking place all around Europe in a clearly arranged and fast way.
Don’t hesitate to have a look at http://www.best.eu.org/company under participation to events.
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Board of European Students of Technology
BEST University Center Since its foundation in 1988, BEST has envisioned to encourage the exchange of experience between technical students and provide them information about opportunities for studying abroad. This goal induced the idea of creating a platform where the universities in the BEST network can present themselves and their study opportunities. This idea was brought to life through BEST University Centre, a project that completes the services that BEST offers to students: information about universities together with educational offers, all available on the public webpage of BEST. BEST University Centre is continuously developing since 2007, at this moment 39 BEST universities have their profile published. Each of them has the possibility to announce educational opportunities for students, such as Summer Schools, Master Degrees, PhDs, Researches, etc. We are currently working on having all BEST universities using this project as a tool to promote themselves, along with their study offers available for students. The final goal of BEST University Centre is to offer technical students more information about study opportunities abroad, all gathered in one place and easily to browse through. Since last year, universities that are not yet part of the BEST network got the possibility to improve their visibility and encourage student mobility through BEST University Centre as well. BEST University Centre gives: • students the chance to find offers to study abroad, in their desired scientific fields and countries • universities the chance to increase their international visibility • BEST universities and Local BEST Groups the chance to strengthen their relation and start a new cooperation
Annual Report 2009 / 2010
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BEST Engineering Competitions Since 2003, BEST is organising Engineering Competitions (ECs). The goal of an Engineering Competition is to develop students by bringing them together to solve practical tasks and apply the knowledge they gained at University. In the last years different levels of ECs developed including the ones organised as courses and the ones organised on local, national, regional and European level, whereas the different levels may also be interconnected. Every Local BEST Group chooses its own approach to organise competitions but all have the common aim to contribute to the general development of BEST and the interests of its stakeholders. 24h Local Engineering Competitions The 24h concept,where the teams are working for 24 hours in a row at the given topic, appeared in the Local BEST Group (LBG) Porto in 2009. It was an attempt to innovate this kind of events and the results were great: the 15 teams enjoyed the challenge, there was a great promotion of the event through media and it was proved that there are many skills that students could develop during a competition such as stamina, tenacity and team management. In March 2010, the second edition took place in Porto, and the 24h fever spread to LBG Vienna with their first edition. Both 24h events were very successful and proved the huge potential of this event. Tallin Engineering Competition There are LBGs which are famous for their EC tasks. In Tallinn the participants are invited from all around Europe and the tasks of the ECs are always very practical, due to the cooperation with companies, resulting in useful solutions for the partners. For example, once the EC task was developed together with a company who wanted to implement a costsaving packaging solution for its products. The participants helped to solve the issue of the supporter of the EC and the cooperation was very successful. In addition to feasibility, such a task development process helps BEST in Tallinn to establish long-term partnership relations with local companies and to strengthen the link between companies and students; the results of the competitions help the companies to realize the actual high level of students’ knowledge. For example, during SBEC in 2008 a packaging solution was created for the company, which provided the Team Design task; the company was very satisfied with the solution and implemented it.
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Board of European Students of Technology
European BEST Engineering Competition 2010 EBEC - European BEST Engineering Competition is divided in 3 stages from local to the European final where teams of 4 students compete in 2 categories. The first one, Team Design is related to building a device that will fulfil the requirements of the task. The other part, Case Study is related to solving business cases usually provided by companies. This year more than 5000 students from all over Europe competed in 70 local rounds of the European BEST Engineering Competition. The winners participated in 13 National or Regional finals and the 104 best ones gathered together in the final European event in Cluj-Napoca from the 1st until the 11th of August 2010. EBEC being the biggest project of BEST and still under development, many resources were put to support groups in making their local competition as well in making the final event successful. After Ghent in 2009, the final of EBEC 2010 was organised in Cluj-Napoca (Romania) from the 1st until the 11th of August. During 6 days of competitions 104 students solved problems provided by NGOs and partners of the event. The Team Design topics were provided by the United Nations of Environmental program (UNEP) and BEST. UNEP cooperated with BEST in order to find solutions to daily problems they are facing and to promote the social awareness among the best engineers of Europe by building a floating windmill that transforms
the wind energy into electrical energy. Other topics were to build a mechanical device that by spinning a stick of wood able to draw the contour of BEST logo and to build a sail boat guided by a remote control. The Case studies are the work of the partner companies of the event which were: P&G, TAV and Vestas. Other partners were also supporting teams in the Team Design competition as GMV for the Spanish Team , Infineon for the Romanian team, Trelleborg for the Ukrainian team and Thales for the French team. On the last day called the Closing Day, the outcomes of the teams were presented to the public, media, companies and VIPs present. More than 220 people attended this day that also contained a jobfair, in different major places as the National Theater and the Chios lake of Cluj-Napoca. The winners of the Team Design were the GMV Spanish team and the Portuguese team won the Case study category. The media attractiveness of competitions events is very high and this year competitions were reported in almost 250 news in the Media throughout Europe. The final event was 14 times on TV, 10 times on radio and 173 times in online or printed newspapers. Concerning the final event, the website was visited by 6000 unique visitors and the livestreaming during the Closing Day gathered more than 100 viewers. More than 1000 pictures were uploaded, 40 movies and interviews were made. All this information can be found on the website: http://www.ebec.best. eu.org The third edition of EBEC will take place in August 2011 in Istanbul, Turkey.
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Public Relations Project The Public Relations (PR) Project of BEST was started in September 2009 after its first cornerstones were already set with the creation of newsTeam in 2008 and of the PR team for EBEC 2009 (European BEST Engineering Competition). After electing a coordinator the team defined its goals, aims and visons within a first short intensive meeting (SIM). Create and spread PR knowledge A wiki page was created which acts as a common knowledge center and a media contact database was set up which includes over 30 international contacts. On the PR WIKI useful handouts and documents are available for BEST members, which can also search contacts by type of channel in the database.Additionally, the news on the Local BEST
Groups (LBGs) and their events are monitored within a media clipping page where 27 news articles have been collected since March 2010. In parallel the amount of PR trainings was increased, delivering sharing sessions about PR during the Spring Regional Meetings and a PR basics workshop for delegates during the 2010 General Assembly in Warsaw.
Create Promotion Opportunities A media partnership proposal was developed by members of the PR project team. The successful outcome of these With this proposal potential media partners were contacted leading to the successful outcome that Euronews got interested on covering the General assambly of BEST and the EuropeanVoice showed an
interrest in cooperating in September 2010. The PR project also focused on social media. Thus, a representative has been elected who has the reponsibility to create and manage the BEST Twitter account, the BEST Facebook group and a FLICKR account for LBGs to share their photos.
Sharing Responsibilities Members of the PR project team give support to local, internal and external BEST events to help with the PR strategy and the contact and interaction with the media. Another focus of PR project is to increase the communication and information flow within the committees and the awareness for the key projects of BEST. Reputation The ultimate goal of the PR project is to make BEST members aware that each and everyone has the power to influence the image of the organisation. Everything that is said to partner companies or guest speakers and each action taken during a BEST event has an effect on the image. Every single BEST member has to consider that there is a risk to harm the image of BEST if he or she keeps judging the actions on an individual scale. On the other hand every single BEST member has the ability to leave a positive impression by applying and respecting a good PR practice.
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Board of European Students of Technology
Communication with BESTies ING has been partnering with BEST for 2 years. At the very beginning, we already had a click with BEST because of the values that we both share: entrepreneurial spirit and can do mentality. Based on these, we experienced a fast take off of our partnership with BEST. In the 2 years of cooperation, we always have good communication with BESTies we’ve worked with. We noticed that all the BESTies we have met are internationally minded and are always ready to take on new challenges. They react fast, communicate clearly, think
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with us, strive for the best, work hard and surprise us with the results they deliver. The way BESTies work reflects well on what we expect from the ING trainees. We enjoyed our cooperation with BESTies a lot, and look forward to seeing more BESTies in ING in the near future!
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Services Evaluation Workshop Since the beginning BEST has been in a continuous improvement process, aiming to bring students, companies and universities together and offering high quality services. Looking back in the history, we can notice that the society has changed a lot, as well as the needs of the students. BEST has always tried to find new paths of development in order to keep up with the fast changes that have occurred in the external environment. The result is the services that BEST offers nowadays: courses, career support, university center, educational involvement, trainings and competitions. Considering that the attractiveness of the services has changed with time, the Services Evaluation Workshop represented a natural step towards innovation and improvement. During the event, the participants tried to find solutions to issues and questions related to the services and the way the BEST services meet the needs of the stakeholders. As a result of the workshop, the outcomes were implemented immediately or were approved by the
bodies of BEST for further analysis. In the field of courses, measures to increase the academic level have been taken and other ideas are to be taken into consideration on the mid-term. It was concluded that BEST University Center is a service with high potential and ideas for further development have been discussed. The educational involvement discussions had a similar outcome: the need of better promotion, in order to reach its high potential. BEST Career Center was also in the spotlight, and the outcomes were focused on how our current career services can become more efficient. The discussions about competitions, our newer service, highlighted ideas for having stronger, convergent competitions. while trainings were promoted as a service of BEST which can be delivered to the external world. The outcomes of the Services Evaluation Workshop helped us identify new directions of development and plan strategies for the long-term. At the same time they reflect the respect and commitment for our stakeholders, as well as the ambition to make our best.
Structure Evaluation Every building has its own structure how the numerous floors are built upon each other, how the offices, flats and different rooms on the floors are connected by corridors, stairs and elevators.
has also gone through a big development in the past years, and for this reason we started a project to evaluate the current structure we are living in.
As an old castle sometimes gets extended throughout the years with new wings and floors, so has grown BEST in the past 20 years with more and more local groups and international working bodies.
With a purpose to improve our efficiency we identified the processes that can be improved to work out solutions that will enable BEST to perform on high level in the future as an organisation. During the project we worked on solutions to improve our strategic planning, regional system, clarify the working structure between different committees and projects, balance the working flow throughout the year, and improve the decision-making system.
However the construction of a building that was practical a while ago to connect the different parts might turn out to be outdated after a lot of new addition. Our organization also
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Board of European Students of Technology
Growth Strategy project The definition of the growth strategy of BEST is a discussion which is ongoing since the birth of the organisation. At the beginning, the founders sent invitations to different universities asking them to join. Thus, BEST was fast-growing and had a big number of new groups but after a few years of constant growth it was realised that sustainability is more important than only growing in number of Local BEST Groups (LBGs). Therefore during the 20 years of existence of BEST different rules and regulations were introduced to maintain the quality and sustainability of the upcoming new LBGs and to limit the pace of growth. Over the years, with the word of mouth the message of BEST was spread all over Europe leading to LBGs in 30 countries. Nonetheless there are still blank spots in the map of Europe so that the organisation still has the possibility to extend to newer, not yet BEST covered countries. This spreading is part of the vision to reach empowered diversity. Therefore in September 2009 a working group was established to find solutions for diversifying the new BEST Observer group applications and providing guidance to them. During the project, issues and solutions were gathered in an open mailing list and small group discussions. Finally a workshop was held in Eindhoven where all the digested knowledge was build into a system, the new growth strategy. This strategy aims to promote BEST to countries which have no LBG yet and to assure well prepared Observer Group applications. At the last BEST General Assembly in Warsaw, proposals were made to update the current regulations and ratify the new growth strategy. As a result of the voting session, BEST is ready to provide better support to the BEST interested groups and to accommodate more BEST Observer groups in the future.
Annual Report 2009 / 2010
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Usability project Imagine preparing a meal in a kitchen you have never been before. You need a spoon and start opening every drawer: first the one where you‘d put the cutlery in your own kitchen, then all others till you find it. Eventually, that wasn‘t too hard. In the end, most people put their cutlery in drawers. Now you start looking for a cutting board. Some people put it in a cupboard, some use the drawer under the oven, some just shove them in between other stuff,... A tougher exercise, and as the pressure starts rising, so is your frustration, until cooking becomes a hard and boring chore, rather than a joy. Now imagine that kitchen, but you don‘t see the doors of the drawers and cupboards. It‘s just a big wall where you have to know where each door is to open it. The BEST intranet used to be somewhere in between that kitchen and the first: extremely convenient for the frequent visitor who has spent many hours finding his way around, extremely frustrating for the occasional one.
In the current project phase we‘re dealing with the inside of the drawers. We need to find out what tools we need and which ones are just lying around gathering dust. Perhaps we need to move the onions and pasta together with the seasoning, rather than storing it in the next room? And let‘s be honest, the kitchen is not really the place for a birthday calendar, or is it? To answer that, we need to know who is the average cook. But every cook has a different meal to prepare, and is used to a different kitchen. So what we do now, is look around the web for self-denounced standards. As we implement those, we drop as much ballast as possible, putting the commonly used pots in the front, and moving the salad spinner to the back, perhaps even throwing out some things to make the essential stand out more.
We were missing labels saying „cutting boards and pots“, „seasoning“ or „cooking cutlery“. Half a year was spent composing a coherent navigation. Ever since, we started getting feedback and bug reports from places we barely knew existed. This is a clear indicator that people find their way around, to do what they need faster or to accidentally stumble upon information to learn more about our organisation. Getting back to the kitchen, you could say that now we know where the tools are, but once you open a drawer, the cutlery is lying around quite messily. It takes time to find what you need, since all forks, knives and spoons are screaming „pick me!“ at the same time.
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Board of European Students of Technology
International Projects’ Forum 2010 The majority of services provided by BEST are organised by independent Local BEST Groups (LBGs).Thus, an international coordination is needed to ensure that the services meet the necessary level of quality and around 300 people are working daily in order to provide the necessary supporting activities. While most work is happening online through well developed communication channels, a live event is needed to boost the efficiency of the coordination. This is the reason why BEST organises an annual event called International Projects’ Forum (IPF). During this event 60 active members of BEST gather to discuss hot topics on international level, work on specific topics and plan the cooperation for the future. Besides the event is a very good opportunity for BEST members to network and build up stronger personal connections amongst each other, as well as enjoying the social traditions of BEST and the culture of the organising group.
Virtual International Plenary The Virtual International Plenary (VIP) is a „Very Important Part“ of BEST, has a lot of „Very Important People“ representing each Local BEST Group and has a „Valuable Input on Proposals“. A few years back a group of BEST members had the dream to find a solution to make the decision making body more flexible, more accessible throughout the year and even more involved in all matters of the organisation. At that time all decisions were made at the General Meetings (General Assembly and Presidents Meeting) and many decisions and discussions had to wait for months to be able to move on. During the General Assembly of 2009 the dream has finally come true as the Local BEST Groups (LBGs) have accepted the proposal to add the VIP as new decion making body.
official discussions and proposals throughout the year. VIP is composed of delegates from all the LBGs, the International Board and a team of Speaker and Deputy Speaker, working all-year round. Within the first year of its existance the VIP dealt with seven proposals, all preceded by the correspondent discussion where a topic owner would clarify any uncertainties and open questions. But this was just the beginning and growth of importance of the VIP is expected for the next years to come.
Like in few organisations, there is a virtual system that allows all LBGs, Committees or the International Board to present important
Annual Report 2009 / 2010
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Presidents’ Meeting Lviv From the 3rd to the 9th of December, 2009, the 15th Presidents’ Meeting (PM) of BEST took place in Lviv after it had to be postponed by one month because of the pandemia of flu in Ukraine. The members of the Local BEST Group Lviv had accepted the challenge with a strong desire to organise the best PM in Lviv and with the support of all BEST members a great event was held. The schedule of the 5 days of the PM included an official opening, a press-conference, a series of presentations of company-partners of BEST, a Job Fair with companies, two Round Tables with representatives of Ukrainian and European universities, Lviv City Hall and international companies and a cocktail reception for participants as the closing part of the opening day. The major time tie was dedicated to plenary sessions where the leaders of the organisation and delegates of all the Local BEST Groups (LBGs) discussed urgent matters on the future of BEST, its projects with the European Union, its actions towards bringing students of technology and companies closer and its impact on students’ lives and education all over Europe. Important decisions were taken and BEST is working hard to make them real.
General Assembly Warsaw The General Assembly is the biggest one and the most important decision-making body of BEST.In this year members of BEST met in Warsaw and last from 29-th of April till 7-th of May. The Opening Day took place in Main Hall of Warsaw University of Technology. Eight International companies participated and the opening speech was done by Vice-President of European Society of Engineering Education, Prof. Jose Carlos Quadrado. In the next seven days, 250 most active members of BEST invited guest from other students organisations and alumnies were discussing,and deciding about most vital issues for future of our organisation. Now, after the event, we are convinced that this General Assembly of BEST has helped us to grow stronger, has brought all 83 local BEST groups closer together and also helped to improve relationship with other stakeholders of BEST. For us, local BEST group Warsaw, it was exating adventure, unforgettable time and greatest challenge. For whole year, 60 students was preparing for this moment. Now we are proud to say, it was worth to put all this effort in this event.
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Board of European Students of Technology
General Meetings For many years now, P&G has been partnering with BEST. We have had very good experiences in taking part in many of the events organized by BEST. We had the opportunity to meet young students showing leadership and ability to bring the biggest challenges to a good end. This set of winning attributes, combined with the international environment that BEST offers, fits very well in the P&G profile. We are, too, very keen on building our technical and creative capabilities to face our every day challenges in a multinational work environment.
BEST students a very complete overview of the wide range of challenges it takes to touch more than 1 billion consumer lives every day. At the same time, we enjoyed the opportunity to have diverse chats with many of the BEST students in a very informal way. BEST and P&G, it has been a success story for many years. We are looking forward to strengthening our partnership even further in the upcoming year. The BEST campus team Procter & Gamble
The General Assemblies of BEST in particular proved to be an excellent platform to get in touch with the BEST students. With focused presentations and 2 case studies during the last GA in Warsaw, we managed to give the
Annual Report 2009 / 2010
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Knowledge management in BEST Back in 2006, we started to realise that, although BEST members learn a lot by being part of the organisation, the knowledge of BEST barely grows, meaning that different generations of people had to learn the same things over and over again. After some years trying to figure out the best way to address this issue, there is now an international team working on this field. The first steps taken have been to map the different kinds and connections of knowledge in BEST and to identify the communities that will benefit from the application of knowledge management. Currently, the main focus is on helping our Local BEST Groups to assume good practices on this topic, since they are the base of the organisation, where all members begin and acquire their working habits. Although there is still a long way to go, we are sure that BEST has the characteristics required to succeed in managing its knowledge in the most efficient way and has a huge potential for becoming a learning organisation.
Training system in BEST Many times BEST tries to shadow what the socalled professional world is doing, where companies focusing on profits lose somewhere the joy we are keen on, and that is surrounding whatever we are doing. Shaping the human side of the organisation, Training Group (TiGro) of BEST is dealing with the continuous education of our members and with teambuilding. TiGro supports BEST members to get the most out of their human potential and manages the knowledge inside the organisation so that it is kept sustainable. Thereby it helps to tackle the high fluctuation that every NGO faces. TiGro is responsible for the organisational development of every Local BEST Group (LBG), delivering training sessions, teambuildings, and promoting the development of
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individuals. On average 50 hours of trainings are held within one week in every single corner of Europe! Apart from this direct LBG support, TiGro provides week-long lasting training events (called Trainshops), each with different main focuses, like fundraising, marketing, human resources or leadership. Within one year, around 7-8 of these events happen, which are the best way to deepen the knowledge and skills of the lucky participants who are among the top talented members of BEST. And how is this whole training system self-sustainable? Already for more than 10 years BEST has been training the trainers too, producing trainers not depending on external world, but smartly synthetsising any input coming from the professionals and alumni.
Board of European Students of Technology
Professional life after BEST
Vestas seeks to hire the best talent, so when they are recruiting for their Graduate Programme; BEST members are of keen interest. “My goal was to secure a job at a company that believes in my abilities and potential,” described Jan Laureys, a member of the Vestas Graduate Programme since September 2008 and a BEST alumnus. “For about one year prior to graduation, I was comparing lots of very different opportunities and jobs offered by very diverse companies. Suddenly I received a Career Newsletter from BEST, advertising the Vestas Graduate. I was thrilled about the offered challenges, possibilities and opportunities, both for professional and personal development. It was immediately very clear to me that this was by far the best and most challenging programme I had seen so far. Applying was the only logical move,” Laureys continued. Jan joined BEST in 2005 while studying electromechanical engineering Ghent University. “During my studies, I already knew that being technically sound is not enough to achieve professional success. Having the opportunity to participate in very diverse BEST courses in Tallinn, Estonia; Ljubljana, Slovenia; and Ghent, Belgium, BEST further opened my eyes for the advantages of a multicultural workplace and the excitement
Annual Report 2009 / 2010
of an international career,” described Jan. Since joining Vestas’ Graduate Programme, his career truly has been international. Jan began his first eight-month rotation in the Graduate Programme in Lem, Denmark, then moved to Singapore to work in Vestas’ R&D facility and currently, Jan is completing his final graduate rotation in a Vestas sales office in Portland, Oregon, in the USA, but his international experience does not end there. “I also attended several graduate camps in Spain, Denmark, China and Germany where I had the opportunity to improve my presentation and communication skills, gain more wind turbine market knowledge and develop a global cultural understanding.” Jan credits BEST for preparing him for the challenges of working with an international company in a team environment. “BEST offers great opportunities to its members. By being surrounded by amazing people and strong characters, BEST gave me the opportunity to explore and develop my own abilities and potential.”
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Cooperations We are living in a complex world, where different organisations from different fields take action in order to provide better opportunities for students. In BEST we consider that sharing the best practices with other NGOs is the perfect ingredient for beying able to innovate and improve our services. That is the reason why during the last year we have concentrated more resources on improving the external relations of BEST. For many years BEST has been partner with other two technical organisations: bonding from Germany and CFES (Canadian Federation of Engineering Students) from Canada. The good things that came from these partnerships along the years opened our eyes and therefore we started to explore other organisations. We considered it was the best moment to initiate an innovative project called Trainers’ Forum, which had as central topic trainings and training systems, a field in which BEST is quite advanced. The event brought together 14 NGOs: AEGEE, AIESEC, ARDOR, BEST, bonding, CFES, EFPSA, EMSA, EPSA, ESTIEM, IAESTE, IFMSA, IPSF, SALUS. Besides the sharing of best practices, Trainers’ Forum acted like a catalyst of cooperations between the participating NGOs.
BEST soon made another step forward and a new partnership was born with AEGEE (Association des Etats Generaux des Etudiants de l’Europe) at General Assembly 2010. This was the result of a year full of preparations and intensive communication between the boards and ambassadors of the two organisations. Meanwhile, contact has also been kept with other organisations such as SEFI (European Society for Engineering Education) and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation). Together with SEFI we have been developing an event of education. Meanwhile we have also discussed with UNESCO about a partnership on higher education. All in all, BEST had a challenging year from the point of view of external relations. The results have been impressive and the development is significant. Nevertheless, this is just the beginning! The ground has been prepared and more co-operations, sharing and involvement of BEST bodies is expected to happen during the following year.
European Commission The European Commission facilitates co-operation among the ministries in charge of youth and promotes a structured dialogue between policy-makers and young people and their organisations. The aim is to promote the active citizenship of young people, to foster their social integration in society and to ensure that a youth dimension is taken into account in other EU policies. The Youth in Action Programme is a specific program for young people, supporting these
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policies. The programme promotes mobility within and beyond the EU borders, non-formal learning and inter-cultural dialogue, and encourages the inclusion of all young people, regardless of their educational, social and cultural background. This year 7 National Engineering Competitions (in Belgium, France, Italy, Poland, Potugal, Romania and Turkey) have been funded with support from the European Commission, through the Youth in Action Programme.
Board of European Students of Technology
Trainers’ Forum Being 10 years old, TiGro, our committee taking care of our training system, felt that an event where trainers could meet and share would be very valuable for our community. Trainers’ Forum 2010 was born, raising the issue of „What can we improve in NGO’s training system?“.
From the 26th to the 30th of March 2010, 75 trainers from international student NGOs gathered in a hungarian cottage. Representing more than 15 associations, different generations, and having different backgrounds, they attended Trainers’ Forum 2010 with the same will to share, the same passion about developing people and their soft skills. Thanks to the wonderful support from our local BEST group in Budapest, and the use of Open Space Technology (OST), we created an atmosphere where people could meet, share, dream and have fun. OST is an innovative way of holding meetings, where participants can openly suggest discussion groups and attend any session, at any time. As a result, people feel they are always at the right place, at the right time, and contribute with passion to discussion they care about. We also provided opportunities for anyone to inspire others and present ideas worth spreading, through some more conventional sessions. In three days we succeeded in building a sharing attitude in a very diverse group. In 3 days, our participants had the time to tackle
Annual Report 2009 / 2010
more than 60 topics, share their knowledge and materials, present creative ideas and new concepts, as well as working on new fields of cooperation. In the upcoming months, BEST will support different NGOs to set their training system, strenghen their „train the trainer“ event or held common training events, thus giving to our trainers new opportunities to deliver. We strongly believe that we can learn a lot by supporting each others! The strong will from the participants to attend next edition is a motivating factor for us to reconduct the experience. We do believe in the potential of such an event through the years! Next edition will happen in March 2011 in Vienna and will have parallel training sessions, discussion groups and other innovative activities in order to develop the content of training and help the trainers attain the highest tops!! If you share with us a passion for developing students, whether you are from the student, academical or professional world, you will be more than welcome to our next edition of Trainers’ Forum!
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Financial Report BEST consists of almost 3000 members, whose main activity is being an university student. Therefore a BESTie is able to contribute relatively large amount of time for BEST activities, but financially not. In order to be able not to ask fees for event participations, buy necessary administrative equipment and pay travel rembruisements to members BEST is closely cooperating with industrial partners and European institutions.
This money is spent on managing the organisation and enabling BESTies to travel, own our IT tools, create our own marketing materials and host the statutory meetings to make important decisions about the organisation. Money is not the aim why we do BEST – it is just essential for the survival of the organisation.
Although each of BEST Local Group has their own finances, there is also a Common Account of BEST that receives money mostly from Annual Partners of BEST and European Institutions.
Revenues Corporate Partners Career Support Partners Supporters Project Partners Statutory Meetigns Partners EBEC Partners Total
36.000,00 47.000,00 13.000,00 6.500,00 45.000,00 20.000,00
€ € € € € €
167.500,00 € Expenses Internal Communication External Relations Administration Public Relations Statutory Meetings and EBEC Unexpected Expenses Total
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60.970,00 8.720,00 7.000,00 10.500,00 77.000,00 3.310,00
€ € € € € €
167.500,00 €
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Partnership levels Corporate Partnership For a company, what often matters is not only to associate its image to a dynamic student organisation, but also to help this organisation grow stronger. While collaborating with BEST at various events, a Corporate Partner gets closer to its members, develops them and
brings new ideas and input to the organization. Our Corporate Partners benefit from a partnership based on shared values and interest, fluent communication and wide-spread visibility in and outside of BEST.
Career Support Partnership Attracting young talents is a key component for any company willing to remain innovative and competitive. In this perspective, searching for the right people as well as proposing interesting job opportunities is important. Being Career
Support Partner of BEST means taking advantage of the subtle and balanced combination of image branding and career opportunities, where BEST is the link between the company and the students from technical universities.
Supporter Being well known is one thing, having a widespread visibility is another. A Supporter of BEST benefits from both. In places where the companies are already known, BEST raises
the attention of students from technical universities towards their other business areas. In places where they are unknown, BEST helps them to reach and attain it.