Presidential evaluation of the first batumi school session

EYP GEORGIA

The First Batumi School Session European Youth Parliament Georgia Presidential evaluation by Mariam Chubabria

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Introduction The overview bellow concerns the First Batumi School Session of the European Youth Parliament Georgia and is intended to neutrally assess the evaluation of the session’s logistic and academic sides. It mainly describes the problems and positive precedents that I detected, which can be avoided or useful for the future EYP events. Although I took into consideration the multiple points raised at the evaluation meetings (May 1-5, 2013) and analysis of delegates evaluation. The ideas and positions expressed hereby are solely mine.

Delegates: I am very pleased with an overall quality of selected delegates. It seems the organizers paid good attention to the delegates’ selection process and chose the delegates with good English, knowledge and attitude.

Additionally, I truly appreciate the organizers effort to organize the information meetings at participation schools.

The Batumi School Session proved for me again that this project is very much suitable for the school pupils.

However, on the session there were several delegates with inadequate academic readiness and moreover, they were allocated in one committee (DROI) which made a committee work very passive.

Venues: The Marin Academy was a perfect place for the committee works; however the room for eating was not comfortable enough.

The venue for Opening Ceremony was not convenient and many officials had no place to seat.

Agenda: It is very disappointing that the planned schedule of going to Batumi Aquarium was canceled despite the fact that it was stated in Information booklet. I would strongly recommend all the future organizers teams to do their best to fulfill their plans which are aiming at make a session attractive.

Due to the miscommunication between me and Head Organizer a dinner break was announced much earlier than planned and participants were expecting a food for half an hour.

Unfortunately, the GA ended two our earlier and the editor did not have enough time to fully compile a final video.

Food: A delicious food was usually of reasonable number; however the quantity was not enough for on the last lunch.

Media coverage: Media coverage was very important, however there were several errors announced by journalists and interviewees as well about EYP or its sessions.

Due to unprofessionalism of journalist of Adjarian TV at the opening ceremony a journalist, recording an organizer, was disturbing to the audience.

It was unexpected to see no banner on the session. I would strongly require all the session to have a banner.

Evening activities: The first day evening activity was not well thought and well managed. Unfortunaely, it was not planned by organizers beforehand and due to session’s president leadership one activity was planned by chairs team. But as the activity was managed by journs, who were not involved in planning process, the game did not go as planned. However, thanks all journalist who were involved in the game.

Thanks to the journo assistance the second day concert and committee presentations proved to be very successful. I would like to notice here that an initial venue of the concert was inadequate for the activity and fortunately the organizers, by my persistent request, were able to change the venue.

General Assembly: I would strongly recommend the organizers to arrange adequate venues for each activity. The venue for GA was better than the planned one in the Marine Academy. However, there were not enough microphones in order to hear delegates speaking from their places.

It was extremely unpardonable to have insufficient number or resolution booklets and no reason can justify it.

Unfortunately, some delegates were not formally dressed for General Assembly. I would advise the organizers and chairpersons to make sure that their delegates are aware of the requirements for the day.

Closing Ceremony: The speeches were satisfactory and it went according to all procedures.

Farewell Party: Thanks to the organizers we had very pleasant venue for farewell party, however the music was not provided for a while.

Journo Team: The press team was mobilized and active. The video was quite amusing.

I do have some remarks concerning the issues (especially second), which were not satisfactorily edited; however several articles were exceptionally good.

Organizers Team In my opinion the session had very active team of organizers and they were following advices of experienced EYPers.

Unfortunately, the collaboration between organizers and press team was not satisfactory. The journalists did not have a personal organizer, they were not provided by a Press Room with adequate technique and usually they were not informed about agenda changes. However, I would encourage all the experienced officials of the future sessions to advice organizers how to better manage a session if they are not competent enough.

As Batumi is small city it was clear that organizers knew the delegates in person, however it is an unwritten law in EYP to have a “distance� between officials and the delegates. Additionally, organizers involvement in the committee work is intolerable.

All the committees had their organizer whose work was well appreciated by the chairpersons on the evaluation meeting.

However, I would not encourage organizers being involved in committee teambuilding. Usually organizers use that time for preparing a rooms of committee work. Moreover, despite the fact that the organizers were presence on the teambuilding the TB materials were not provided to the chairpersons.

Chairs team: the team was selected on a very short notice. However, it still displayed a good balance of pioneer and experienced EYPers. I very much support engagement of first time chairs on each session in order to have many qualified officials. I truly believe we need to build a good capacity of experienced chairs team by including International Session Georgian alumnus.

For more representative evaluation of the session please look through the survey results, which were filled by delegates: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewanalytics?formkey=dFVZcnF4WWMydkNsdTZkbmZjY2VJZ FE6MQ