a i r t s u A n i C E S E AI t r o p e R l Annua
OUR IDEA Letter from MCP 14’15 .................................03 What is AIESEC? ..........................................05 What starts here changes the world ..............06 Our Vision ......................................................07 Our Priorites ...................................................08
OUR ACTION Incoming Exchange ..............09 Outgoing Exchange ..............09 Membership...........................11 National Conferences............12
OUR PURPOSE AIESEC in Graz...................13 AIESEC in Innsbruck...........14 AIESEC in Linz....................15 AIESEC in Salzburg.............16 AIESEC in Vienna..........17 -20
OUR IMPACT Our stories. .........................21/22 Financial report.....................23/24 Our Partners.........................25/26
Opening Letter from the President of A
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“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man” - Campbell, Joseph The story of our year is a story of leadership, just like the thousands AIESEC provides year by year in the past 67 years globally and for the past 63 years right here, in Austria. Like any story of leadership , it started with an AIESEC that has been changing strategies and plans, but where the way of doing AIESEC was fundamentally the same, year by year. As a global network however we realized that if we want to reach extraordinary results, we need to take extraordinary actions. This led to moving AIESEC to the next step in the hero’s journey, going outside
of the “common day” into a “region of supernatural wonder”. We decided to be much more customer centric as an organization, and in the process, to stick to our core purpose and values. Becoming more customer centric and delivering relevant leadership experiences however was not an easy way, because dealing with change never is, in the end. We stood behind our decision though and slowly understood that change means getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, taking risks, finding solutions by ourselves and bringing innovation. We changed the way we interact with our customers, making our processes and opportunities more transparent than ever. Moreover, we changed our complete business model to be aligned with our vision, focusing it for the first time on what we promised to deliver to the world: leadership development.
From this adventure AIESEC in Austria came out as a renewed organization. It might look like the same organization, but the change left marks not only on processes and strategies, but in the culture itself. And this was the story of AIESEC in Austria MC Team of 14/15; the story of Generation 14/15.
Cristina Soreanu President of AIESEC in Austria 2014/2015
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AIESEC in Austria
What is AIESEC? AIESEC is a global platform for young people to explore and develop their leadership potential. It is a non-political, independent, not-for-profit organization run by students and recent graduates of institutions of higher education. Members of AIESEC are interested in world issues, leadership and management. AIESEC does not discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or national/social origin. The organization spans 126 countries and territories. Every aspect of AIESEC’s operations are managed by students and recent graduates in these countries and territories. We have operated in this way since our inception, making us uniquely “by students, for students” for over 65 years. Our Vision, Our Impact, and the Way We Do It We envision peace and fulfilment of humankind’s potential. We work towards this by enabling young people to discover and develop their potential to provide a positive impact on society. Our Values We are able to activate the leadership potential of young people by engaging them early on with a values-based environment that shapes their behaviours.
Activating Leadership Demonstrating Integrity
Living Diversity Enjoying Participation
Striving for Excellence Acting Sustainably
6 “What starts here changes the world.� This quote, written on one of the walls in the AIESEC global headquarters in Rotterdam, Netherlands, describes the purpose of AIESEC in the world: to create globally-minded leaders who will become change agents for society. Our mid-term ambition, set every 5 years, provides a quantifiable, measurable way of setting and achieving benchmarks towards this purpose. Generation 2014-2015 was provided with the unique opportunity of participating in the final sprint of the mid-term ambition AIESEC 2015, set in 2010 at the International Congress in Hyderabad, India. AIESEC 2015 is to engage and develop every young person in the world, by becoming a high-quality leadership development platform that is considered first-choice in the world. AIESEC 2015 called on AIESEC globally to achieve this by delivering 1 million experiences in 5 years through our four experiential learning programs: Team Member Program, Team Leader Program, Global Internship Program, and Global Community Development Program. For the leaders of the term 2014-2015, this meant understanding which focuses to have, behaviors to develop, and processes to improve in order to achieve the rest of the goals.
The global network determined that the path to achieving the rest of AIESEC 2015 would be paved with 3 focuses:
Evolve Into A Bottom Up Culture
Be Clear On Our Business Model
For 2015 to be achieved, we needed the contribution of every Right now was the moment for us single member in the organization. to translate our unique value proposiThis means feeling the ownership of tion to our daily operations and make the organization, and not waiting for sure we are delivering our essence solutions from someone else. into every single activity.
Shaping What We Do Around What The World Needs The world is calling for AIESEC to play a bigger role, and this will only happen if we start planning our operations based on what is actually happening out there, so that AIESEC is part of the world and not something aside.
These focuses catalysed many new internal and external changes, such as launching a new global information management and customer-driven platform called EXPA, creating a new GIP product called Global Entrepreneurs, and re-defining our customer flows for members, exchange participants, companies, and organizations.
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When coming up with the team name, we wanted to choose something that will represent us as a team, but also as an entity that is driving AIESEC in Austria. Our idea from the beginning was to capitalise on the previous team’s success and add our own ideas and efforts to lead the entity in the best possible way. Momentum, just like our ambition for the term, represents the unstoppable force that will make a change and impact massively.
Our vision When creating a vision, it is very important to make concise, yet very precise set of sentences to ensure everybody is clear with them. We chose the words that represent out vision, our perception what we could do as a team, and we committed that we will stand up for it in everything we do. Here is the vision statement of Momentum team:
United, we fulfil our promises to customers and deliver more valuable development experiences, which brings us a shift in Austrian mindset. This is what makes us relevant and recognised as a youth leadership provider. A good vision needs to be driven from values that are incorporated in day to day activities.
Clarity Through simplicity, focus and by keeping in mind the bigger picture, we understand how and why we do what we do.
Commitment A promise to maintain the responsibility and passion despite all the challenges.
Achievement Through our results, we show and restore the belief in AIESEC in Austria.
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Term priorities In order to stay on the right path when going through the term, it is very important to define what is important and what should be the priorities in the term. We had three main focuses in 2014/2015
IGIP Growth We saw the potential in the corporate market and the local entities to develop Incoming Global Internship Program. Our vice president put effort in building up the area, supporting new entities to establish a sustainable knowledge base and working towards stabile performance. Education system was built under the concept name of Sales Development Program which consisted of series of trainings, Sales Academy delivered by our general partner HAYS and materials. This program was developed by our Vice Presidents of Incoming Global Internship Program, Corporate Relations and Talent Management.
LC Development This year we had many strategies implemented to foster the growth of the entities, from very established to those which are in the beginner stage. We are happy to see two newly established entities, AIESEC in Krems and AIESEC in UniLi (Liechtenstein). AIESEC in Krems consists of eleven brave individuals who are striving to bring impact to the students of IMC Krems by providing them with outgoing internship opportunities. The first results are visible and we are excited to see them achieving the first realisations. AIESEC in UniLi structure is composed of seven members. They are working mainly on connecting vast company market and students by running incoming global internship program. As for the rest of the entities, growth in programs has been detected in all of them. As our focus was to provide the entities with proper support and tactics, we developed the OD model and introduced LC coaching model. In this way we have tailored, yet unified approach when it comes to LC development.
Marketing Every organisation that strives to reach a bigger and broader impact should to recognise the need to invest in marketing. This is what we realised and what we wanted to invest in. Throughout the year, we have been inviting CEEDers to join us and support with rebranding the programs and with online marketing. We boosted our reach by introducing Google and Facebook Ads and by making a dynamic and more user-friendly website. This aside, we made sure that our members are well educated in this area by organising the first Marketing Academy for every marketing enthusiast, or anyone who is interested to learn the basics in design, online and offline marketing.
Our Performance General Overview When we look at the exchange performance, overall we managed to grow 8% which we consider a great success. Looking at programs separately, there were several things we put focus on or that affected our growth/drop rate in this term.
Inco ming Program
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In Incoming programmes we decided to allocate a MC Manager who would focus completely on the Incoming Global Citizen programme so that we could really put all our efforts into the national focus program: Incoming Global Talent. Having more entities splitting the area on the local level, the need of having this Manager position was present and that person took over the commission work and the development of the area. Although the structure was not completely set in place, this was the time when the area started to get shape in the local entities and when our local offices saw more and more the potential in it. In Incoming Global Talent our main priorities were increasing sales intensity, building up on entity partnerships and customer loyalty. When it comes to increasing sales intensity, our main solution was working on the Sales Development Programme, a complete programme that incorporated education and coaching, with a close performance management system where we could track the results and draw conclusions from. Secondly, the entity partnerships were created with our biggest potential suppliers. This led us to better expectation setting with our partners and to better understand what we can offer. However the main results happened, on one side, because of startup market penetration, in Vienna and, on the other side, through upscaling already existing contracts in two of our entities.
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From the Outgoing programmes perspective, this was a year of changes, due to a bigger focus on the customer experience we are offering, changes that brought a substantial value to our organization but that took a certain amount of time to adapt to. One of the biggest changes that the new customer flow introduced was a new Global Information System. The new platform helped us be more customer centric and introduce faster and smarter processes, however in the beginning it led to inefficiency and drop in Outgoing Global Citizen results, until our network adapted to it and the system was fully functioning. Even with this, we managed to grow in Outgoing Global Talent, a result of the strong entity partnership base that we were fostering the whole term. When it comes to priorities for our Outgoing programs, we wanted to re-put Leadership at the center of what we are doing, to ensure that our participants in both Global Citizen and Global Talent are developing leadership through their experiences. For that, we invested in a stellar preparation before they were leaving in their internships (Outgoing Preparation Seminars – delivered locally), complemented with an event when coming back to Austria (Reintegration seminar – delivered for the first time nationally). Secondly, we saw the relevance of creating partnerships in the AIESEC network in order to promote in a more focused way, which led for the first time to have created entity partnerships for both Global Citizen and Global Talent programmes. This led to our growth in the Global Talent programme, because we were able to direct our applicants to the concrete opportunities rather than offering them the entire network of AIESEC.
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When talking about performance, it is important to acknoledge that not only the numerical results are important, but as well the way these experiences were delivered. As previously mentioned, during our term the global plenary decided to make a shift and become more customer centric than ever before. This also led the introduction of Standards and Satisfaction during the International Congress 2014 in Taiwan, replacing Quality and Net Promoter Score for quality measuring and giving accurate directions on how to measure how we deliver our experience, and not only their number. Our goal as an organization is to provide leadership development experiences and if we are not meeting our standards, we are not fulfilling this promise to the world and cannot exceed our satisfaction goal. There were four groups of standards introduced, that we as AIESEC, and as AIESEC in Austria, committed to: Logistics (Visa & Work Permit, Arrival Pickup, Departure Support), Job (Job Description, Duration, Working Hours, First Day of Work, Individual Goals), Living (Insurance, Accommodation, Basic Living Costs), Experiential learning (AIESEC Purpose, Expectations Setting, Preparation, Home Facilitated Learning and Host Facilitated Learning). By fulfilling these standards, we would ensure higher satisfaction of all our customers (incoming and outgoing participants). These, together with our strategies for growing the programmes, were definitory for our term.
Member Statistics AIESEC in Austria has been very lucky to experience a diverse and motivated membership base this year. Each Youth Talent recruitment has brought in many new people representing different backgrounds, skills, and competencies. In our winter semester recruitment (in October) we selected 169 new members out of 406 applications, bringing the total semester count to 306 members (all levels: team member, team leader, and executive board).
Countries our members come from, originally: Greece, Spain, Sweden, Russia, Italy, Germany, Colombia, Hungary, Pakistan, Mongolia, Ukraine, USA, Albania, Taiwan,
Iran, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, China, Guatemala, Jordan, Macedonia, Poland, Latvia, Bulgaria,
Netherlands, Tunisia, Great Britain, Mexico, Zimbabwe, France, Venezuela, India, Indonesia, Norway, Croatia, Czech Republic, Kazakhstan, Bolivia,
Sri Lanka, Armenia, New Zealand, The Philippines, Austria
70% of our members come from bussines and economic studies 70% of our members are in the team member program, while the rest are teaam leader and exective board members
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National Conferences This year, AIESEC in Austria came together four times as a national plenary to learn, grow, and develop together as one entity. Our four conferences--Commission Conference, Austrian Leadership Preparation Seminar, Transition Conference, and National Conference --provided a space for our members and leaders to explore new ideas and concepts, connect to other AIESECers around the country, and solidify our vision for one AIESEC in Austria.
Commission Conference (September 2014) The purpose of the conference was to reconvene after the summer in preparation for the upcoming winter semester. The conference was open for executive boards and team leaders, who received general education on member recruitment and selection processes. Then, each commission had its own agenda, to prepare for functional area focuses for the upcoming semester. The conference welcomed 49 delegates in total.
(December 2014) Austrian Leadership Preparation Seminar The objective of the conference was to provide reflection and personal development spaces for team members, Countries team leaders, and executive our members come boards. The conference was split into three tracks for these three respective groups. Team members explored various elements of from, originally: self-awareness. Team leaders focused on effective communication development, and executive boards focused on the responsibility they had for impacting the world. Together these three things formed the early version of AIESEC’s leadership development model and the impact that AIESEC programs make on each of its customers. The conference welcomed 166 delegates in total, as well as an international facilitator team comprised of AIESECers from Australia, Czech Republic, Serbia, and Slovakia.
Transition Conference (February 2015) The purpose of the conference was to gather the newly elected vice presidents of the executive boards to deliver the first set of transition knowledge, which would then be followed by team and individual transitions at the local level. General AIESEC education was delivered in the common sessions, and each commission had functional area time to deliver the most relevant functional area education. The conference welcomed 49 delegates in total.
National Conference took (May 2015) The purpose of the conference wasmembers to gather all team members, team leaders, and execCountries our come utive boards to deliverfrom, education, inspiration, and facilitate the next steps. Team members originally: received further knowledge in their functional areas, team leaders received leadership and management education, and executive boards began the finalization of their term plans. In addition, the conference theme #itsuptome provided delegates with the mindset of taking ownership of their actions, solutions, and results. The conference welcomed 145 delegates.
AIESEC in Graz At the beginning of the term AIESEC in Graz set three focus areas: member efficiency, members’ retention and awareness. To put this into practice they created a very strong and proactive culture in their Executive Board that was transferred to the rest of the entity. What helped during this transition process was that the hierarchy was very flat – meaning that the members received power and trust. TO strengthen the brand they put most of the resources in the marketing department department and educated the rest of the entity on how to be a brand ambassador.
Main Projects for the term 14 / 15
Colors of the World
Global Village
This project happened twice during the term with nine incoming students from Iran, Ukraine, Nigeria, Philippines, Egypt, Colombia, Mongolia and Latvia. The goal of this project was to raise awareness about other cultures among Austrian’s youth. Therefore the project worked together with schools and offered workshops to pupils where they could ask questions and learn about new cultures from someone of the same age.
The goal of this event, which happened twice, was to experience other cultures through food and music. The event included 24 different nationalities cooking and presenting their cultures as well as a live band from South America. Due to the size of the event (around 300 participants) it was also possible to promote the exchange programmes and to raise awareness of the organization.
During the term they focused on organizational culture. For the upcoming period we forsee the entity building on this culture and achieving high goals with external stakeholders such as students and companies. As Generation 14/15 we wish for the next generations to become more present in the market, getting to the point where people know AIESEC for its leadership development experiences.
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AIESEC in Innsbruck The focus of the executive board 2014/15 was to become financially sustainable by achieving a higher number of exchanges as AIESEC in Innsbruck struggeled in the last years to deliver exchanges and therefore had problems with financial sustainablilty. In order to do so a priority was tomake our workforce more efficient and deliver meaningful experiences to our members in order to secure the future of AIESEC in Innsbruck. To extend the physical reach of AIESEC, an extension in Liechenstein was established, where important international partner companies have their head quarters.
Main Projects for the term 14 / 15 T Outgoing Programmes
Incoming Programmes
The most important project of the term was to establish AIESEC as exchange organization amongst the students in Innsbruck. In that regards, the entity had a growth of 320% in Outgoing Internships. As customer satisfaction has a crucil impact on recommendations we tried to deliver a high quality to our customers and achieved a growth of 30%.
In regard to the corporate and school partners the vision was to become a reliable organization that delivers results on a regular basis. Therefore, a big focus was on regular communication and perfect delivery. In the term the entity grew 250% in this program.
For the future of our entity Generation 14/15 hopes to see a continuation of positive growth. We are confident that members will be provided with a learning environment in which they want to perform in order to develop themselves. Hopefully, the inclusion of our distant extension Liechtenstein will be successful and contribute to the overall development of the entity. We are optimistic in seeing a further growth in exchange numbers in order to provide students from all over the world with relevant exchange and working experiences. Furthermore we hope that the close work, communication and agreement with university will continue and be further developed. That said we are sure that the executive board 2015/16 will develop the entity into a strong organisation which can be taken over proudly by future generations.
University Relations
Futher improvement in the relations with University of Innsbruck was made. Re-introducing “Innsbruck Student Societies� , a board with representatives from each student organization, we created a strong and united voice in front of students and university. Furthermore, a contract was signed with the rector to secure mutual support and the entity worked with with the university’s career service and international relation office. All of this was topped with great cooperation with deans, professors and university staff.
AIESEC in Linz The term started with only three people in the Executive Board, but that did not stop AIESEC in Linz to achieve . The term focused on Outgoing Internships and organizing one social project “Colors of the World”. Next to these focuses, PR&Marketing strategies were set in place in order to rebrand the organization in Linz, which concluded with great recruitments, a good reputation and awaarenes in the campus, students interested in the programs, and different student organizations and companies interested to cooperate with AIESEC. .
Main Projects for the term 14 / 15
Colors of the World
Discovery
This project managed to bring four individuals from the U.S., the Philippines, Indonesia and Russia to Linz. The four participants visited different schools and taught the children about their cultures and problems. We expanded this project to whole Upper Austria and in total we reached almost 700 children in 10 different schools.
This career fair is being organized together with IAESTE Linz for the past 21 years. During the term 2014 2015 the event took place on March 11th, 2015 in the main building of the university, about 42 companies participated at the career fair and had two great workshops during the day.
Generation 14/15 hopes that with four great leaders in the executive board the LC will continue his growth and improvements in the awareness. Next to some big innovations and rebranding of the career fair and in “Colors of the World” the LC will still stick to some ideas the former term initiated. For example the International Internship Fair will be held at least once a year, respectively the great cooperation between AIESEC and the Alumni-Club Kepler Society and IAESTE Linz will be continued and up scaled.
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AIESEC in Salzburg The term 2014/15 in Salzburg was critical for the existence of AIESEC Salzburg. In the beginning, the purpose of our activities was common in the team. Therefore this year was a year of remembering the relevance of AIESEC in Salzburg and finding a way to communicate it. After rebuilding a strong team of experienced AIESECers and motivated newies, we focused on spreading the word amongst as many students of Salzburg as possible, especially focusing on our Outgoing Global Community Program.
Main Projects for the term 14 / 15
As we decided to focus in order to improve our main processes in membership and exchange, we did not organize any bigger projects. Instead we tried to be present over the whole year with smaller activities at university. To make students interested in going abroad, we organized an international breakfast twice during the term and participated in events about going abroad organized by the university.
Most important I see the entity grow during the next year. Right now there are a lot of new members who need to get more education. Most important is, that they will stay longer than only one semester. Only then they gain enough experience to take AIESEC Salzburg over one day. In AIESEC for sure there is great potential for exchange, especially for the Outgoing Global Community Program and Incoming Global Talent Program. I wish that this year the membership base is steady enough to perform in these programs again.
AIESEC in Vienna, at University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences The past year wrote a crucial page in the young history of AIESEC Vienna BOKU. In the beginning of the year, the relevance of AIESEC at the University for Natural Resources and Life Sciences was on the way of building up and a lot of things needed to be done to fully establish the entity. The way towards becoming a recognized and sustainable entity was not egqt4asy, yet it is behind us. During the past year AIESEC at BOKU answered the questions about its relevance with a loud YES and is now ready to reach new heights.
Main Projects for the term 14 / 15 During the first three months of the past term, AIESEC’s physical presence at the University increased which resulted in the growth of number of Global Citizen applications, different faculties had the opportunity to learn about current topics in entrepreneurship and to meet company representants personally.
As for the HR management, selection processes were improved and the talentcapcacity doubled comparing to the past term.
The sales force of the committee was re-build and showed a lot of persistence and commitment. The leadership pipeline of the executive board was secured from this very team that is now committed to establish the Incoming Global Community Development Program for the first time in BOKU.
LC Vienna BOKU has a bright future – one full of challenges, new projects, lessons to be learned and a lot of work to be done. For me, BOKU’s main assets are the unique profile of their students and the collaboration spirit at all aspects. The students of BOKU are innovative sustainable thinkers, who are there to show the world what can be done differently to create a better life for all. Soon, sustainability won’t be a buzz word but a reality, and I see the active contribution of AIESEC Vienna BOKU and its members towards this goal – within and outside of AIESEC. Secondly, from the very beginning of the term, I dreamed of a collaborative LC BOKU, a hub of ideas and big friendships. Happy to see this already happening, I believe that thought numerous projects in the upcoming years and the right attitude, our LC will become a real synonym of the word ‘cooperation’.
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AIESEC in Vienna, at University of Vienna AIESEC at the University of Vienna is the second biggest entity in AIESEC in Austria, with about 70 members per semester. In this year we slightly decreased the size of the committee, nevertheless we grew in our main measurement, the exchange number by 16% compared to last year, to 59 realized exchanges. Besides that, our focus was to nurture the relation to the leading board of University of Vienna by participating on every possible university event, and establishing new cooperations with institutes we had not contacted before. From the side of our members, we organized several soft-skill trainings for them and gave the opportunity to participate in the organisation of various projects.
Main Projects for the term 14 / 15
In April 2014 we organized the highly successful Austria Youth to Business Forum with the motto “Entrepreneurship” in the business faculty of the University of Vienna. Here the about 100 students from different faculties had the opportunity to learn about current topics in entrepreneurship and to meet company representants personally. AIESEC University of Vienna wants to grow in exchange numbers by an even bigger percentage this year to have a bigger impact on students’ life, by sending more students abroad and organizing incoming projects with more interns than before. For this to happen, strengthening the relation further to university and other external stakeholders is necessary. Ideally, we will soon be able to be physically present at the university, when finding an office in or near to its main building. The organization of the projects mentioned above will continue, so that we can continue providing our members with personal and professional development next to their studies.
Incoming exchange we organized three projects, with six interns – all from different countries. Among others we cooperated with Österreische Integrationsfond and some Viennese high schools, to bring cultural diversity to an Austrian NGO and to hundreds of students.
In order to provide our members with project management experience, we decided to organize two conferences: The National Conference of AIESEC in Austria in May 2014 with 150 participants and the International Train the Trainers conference in September 2014 with 90 participants.
AIESEC in Vienna, at University of Economics “The stepping stone to high potential� The last year was a lot about increasing the exchange performance and building alliances with externals. The entity set a focus on incoming Global Talent and diversified it to different sectors – such as Start-Ups, Marketing and IT. Next to it, a focus on every single member was set. A clear development path from their first touch point until their exit from AIESEC, which resulted in a very high leadership pipeline and retention rate, was establishd. Further, working a lot on marketing and public relation strategies, a bigger reach of students and corporates partners was gained.
Incoming Programmes
Outgoing Programmes
The sectors IT, Marketing and Start-Ups were targeted. As the Start-Up market was very new territory, a team for the market was established and managed to be widely known in the scene with 7 realizations at the end of the term.
Focused on Outgoing Global Talent, starting cooperations with all the FHs and business schools in Vienna. With hosting promotional events an increase in the number of outgoing exchanges and promotion the organization compensated for low summer performance.
Corporate Events In December Consulting Challenge, an interactive career event for consultancies and students had 3 successful partners and 60 satisfied workshop participants. In June Career Days welcomed 15 partners at WU Wien, leading to a 80% partners retention rate.
Within the last year we managed to establish a stable foundation of internal processes and external relations that now can be used to raise the number of experiences. One of the biggest current bottlenecks of the Enitiy is outgoing exchange. Being situated at a university with approximately 25.000 students it is obvious that there is potential for delivering more experienes.
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AIESEC in Vienna, at Technical University Vienna In the term 2014/15 AIESEC in Austria’s youngest entity, AIESEC Vienna TU, was founded. During the first year of existence the focus was on positioning AIESEC at TU and FH Technikum and giving the students the possibility to participate as well in our Youth Talent program as in the exchange programs.
The main starting project was the first Youth Talent recruitment in spring 2014, were more than 30 students from TU and FH Technikum applied to volunteer for AIESEC. Out of those the best 14 were chosen and together with a before established Executive Board of four students from TU and WU the first team of AIESECers at TU started their work. The entity focussed on positioning the organisation at the university as well as on promoting the Global Citizen program there. In summer 2014 it also started to run the Incoming Global Internship Program.
The second Executive Board consist now only of students from Vienna University of Technology, which was another important step in establishing the young committee.
There are still a lot of big steps in front of the entity in order to fulfil the opening mission of creating AIESEC Vienna TU as a collaborative solid foundation where young people can discover and develop themselves. To reach this stability good Youth Talent experiences need to be delivered and the team members should be empowered to reach as well their development goals as the organisations goals. For that the enitiy must work on the collaboration with TU and FH Technikum and in general the positioning amongst technical students. Here most importantly a big demand of IT students worldwide can be used in order to give Austrians and others studying in Vienna the chance to develop themselves and their career paths abroad, knowing how important AIESEC can be also for technical students.
Our Stories Creating unique leadership experiences to all people involved in AIESEC programs is one of the main goals of the organization. During the term 2014/15 MC Momentum wanted to go beyond of just creating these experiences, but also wanted to capture them by launching the “100 stories” campaign. The aim was to collect leadership stories from members, interns and exchange participants.
Youth Talent – Members of AIESEC in Austria
“AIESEC is what keeps me pushing myself forward. It offers me lots of amazing opportunities and in AIESEC I learned that I have to go for those which I´m afraid of, to leave my comfort zone. My experience helped me to get to know myself better, with my strengths and weaknesses and to overcome some of the weaknesses.”
“The most important thing I learned is what it means to be a good leader. Motivating people to work for a purpose and to develop themselves, coaching people and helping them to grow and be the person they want to be.”
Tabea V.
Sara A.
Global Citizen – Outgoing Exchange
“My key learning point was that you sometimes need to leave the surroundings and people you are used to in order to get to know yourself and your values better. At some point you realise that there are many different ways to see the world and that there is more than “one truth”.”
Magdalena G. Brazil
Hazar C. Colombia
“There was a night at Cartagena, when we had a short holiday from work at a Caribbean city. I had just realized that how important my friends there were to me and wherever you are, the places are just a frame. It’s the people around you who fill it. “
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Global Talent – Incoming Exchange
“I was able to consolidate my academical background, by applying them in a professional context and facing the responsibilities of a project. It was also my first time living alone abroad, and overall it was a deep life-changing experience.” –
Henrique L. from Portugal
Global Talent – Outgoing Exchange “My biggest learning point was working in a totally new environment without knowing the language and doing something that I’ve never done before. I learned how to be very flexible and even though I often didn´t understand the ways people would handle things I tried to adapt and still trust my former experiences and gut feeling when doing things.“
Global Citizen – Incoming Exchange
“Do not hesitate, that’s my advice, Austria offers you a huge amount of history, beauty and culture that no other European country can. If you want a journey full of mountains, castles and spicy yet elegant people, that’s your place.” Tatiana B. Colombia Vivian S. Brazil
Birgit Ireland “Best thing I learned was to deal with different personalities. As I didn’t just have German or British customers, I had customers from more or less all over the world. It was really difficult to adapt to each caller and his/her personality/culture.”
“I had my eyes closed before, thinking just based on the reality of my country, but this internship made me throw the band of my eyes and made me grow up, getting to know part of the reality of this world.” Maria B. Dominican Republic
Financial Report The financial year 2014-15 can be described as a very intense period, with lots of unexpected external happenings, such as the moving in to a new office, which made some expenditures unpredictable at the beginning of the term. The focus during the planning period was set on investments, especially in the PR&Marketing area and on the integration of National Support Team members. Throughout the term another focus for the Finance area became to stabilize the debts and receivables of the national team. Also, more transparency on a national and local level was created through aligning a national reporting system, established mainly by the Finance and Legal commission 2014/15. On the one side, the financial balance was heavily dependent on income from the Local Committees (abbreviated LC from now on) and the revenue generated through Corporate Relations (abbreviated CR from now on) activities from our National Partners and on the other side, the high fixed costs for the office and national team flats forced the national team (abbreviated MC from now on) to cut costs and limit investments to a low level.
Income During the term 14/15 the income was mainly generated from Local Committees (41%*) and CR income (40%*). The income from LCs consists of 52% MC fee and 48% from exchange fees, showing that, also from the financial perspective, LC exchange performance remains an important factor for the MC. With 82%* plan fulfilment, the expected revenue was not achieved. Main bottlenecks were the low plan fulfilment in incoming Global Talent, both for LCs and the MC, and the fact of not having been able to establish new major partnerships.
Cashflow It should be mentioned that the MC had cash flow problems at the beginning of July 2014 and at the beginning of January 2015. For both period savings from the reserves had to be withdrawn to support the cashflow. Also, with the change of office, a caution for the new office had to be paid, which had to be supported from the savings.
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2014 / 2015 Expenses For the expenses, only 76%* of the planned expenses were actually made. In general, in all posts the costs were lower as expected. The biggest point in the expenditures was the fixed costs that are needed in order to cover the administrative costs of having an MC, such as the salaries and the living costs (64%*). Besides that, the office expenses also represent a notable post in the budget with 15%*.
Result From a cashflow perspective, the financial term ended with a profit but had to be analysed with caution. Compared to the beginning of the term, the receivables were reduced from 30 000 ₏ to 9 000 ₏, which helped covering the high fixed costs the MC was facing. The financial situation of the MC stagnated in the last terms: Income from CR and exchange (from LCs and MC) hadn’t been able to be increased, which could have resulted in more investments and less crisis management.
_______________________ *excluding items in transit
Our General Partner HAYS is leading global experts in qualified, professional and skilled recruitment. Since 2008 they are constantly expanding the cooperation with AIESEC. They consider engagement during the studies as very important, as it is very beneficial for the personal development as well as for the future planning of the students career. That’s why their goal is to give AIESECers a realistic insight into practice during with presentations and workshops.
EF Education First, the world leader in international Education, was founded in 1995 and is today the world’s largest private education company specialized on language learning, educational travel, cultural exchange and academic programs. EF shares very similar purpose and values with AIESEC as well as its mission: to open the world through education. Thus AIESEC in Austria is happy to collaborate with EF to expand the reach of both.
IE Business School is an international institution dedicated to educating business leaders through programs based on core values of global focus, entrepreneurial spirit and a humanistic approach. IE and its professors are very actively supporting all our events and projects with workshops that connect their values with AIESEC in Austria’s.
General Partner of AIESEC in Austria
Partner of AIESEC in Austria
26 To support our partner Kommunalkredit Austria with projects in social infrastructure, energy, environment and transport, AIESEC in Austria is engaging in a long-term partnership enabling both our projects to become a sustainable success
The Ă–sterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB) is the central bank of the Republic of Austria and a long lasting partner of AIESEC in Austria. As such, the OeNB fulfills a wide range of tasks and responsibilities. Apart from fulfilling its core purposes, the OeNB aims at serving as an example and providing impetus in different spheres of society; it promotes scientific research, contributes to strengthening financial literacy, supports cultural activities and is committed to sustainability and environmental protection.
AIESEC in Austria’s most recent Partner, Lycamobile, mission is to connect friends and family around the world. As the world’s biggest international mobile virtual network operator, Lycamobile provides services to customers across 19 countries, continues to grow rapidly and now welcomes a new customer to its family every two seconds.
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