Adapting Financial Management to Physical Events

AINOA ORDÓÑEZ

Treasurer

Despite all the online struggles our Association endured during the past two years, we are incredibly grateful to bring back the physical format of most of our projects and events. Regardless of all the joy this brings to us as the Board, the change also carries extra responsibilities for the Treasurer. It requires planning and researching for different scenarios and constantly reviewing and adapting each of them.

Therefore, for the general administration and every one of our projects we prepared at least two different budgets: one for a fully online year, and one for a fully physical one. In addition, we made several variations depending on the project and its stages; for example, with our two Moot Court Competitions, we prepared ourselves to have both online and physical Regional Rounds. This demanded a constant revision of all of the budgets during the year, adapting them to the way our position was changing in each area.

One of the prime examples of our adaptation to physical events was the organisation of the 81st International Council Meeting held in Cosenza. Due to the lack of hosts in the past two years, the International Board decided to bear the responsibility of organising this event in person for the first time in two years. It was an incredible responsibility; it required us to organise the event with utmost consideration paying attention to all the details, but most importantly, it set an example to our Network that these events can be organised. Furthermore, we have managed to secure the hosts for our next cycle of International Internal Meetings.

After this event, the International Board was more motivated than ever to bring all our projects back physically. A month later, we successfully organised the Final Oral Round of the 10th Edition of the Helga Pedersen Moot Court Competition, bringing to the city of Strasbourg more than 100 people from 18 different teams to plead in the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights.

Furthermore, in the last week of June, we once again organised the Final Oral Round of the 20th Edition of the John H. Jackson Moot Court Competition, this time in Geneva. During this event, we welcomed more than 150 people from all over the world, allowing them to plead in the heart of the World Trade Organization and in the University of Geneva. This event was particularly rewarding for us since we did not only organise it but also managed to cover the participation fees for six of the competing teams.

After all these events, we are extremely happy to be not only the International Board that brought back our in-person events but also the International Board that inspired our entire network to keep organising them, thus ensuring continuity for the future.