Do you have anything to say about your country?

Cultural issues have always lain at the heart of AEGEE members' interests, making them grow into one of our pillars of action. As individuals we feel that our national cultural heritage is something we are undeniably proud of, want to cherish, take care of, show off, present to the others and make them admire and enjoy.

This embodies our pride. AEGEE is undoubtedely a perfect means for teaching, showing, participating and exchanging between different national cultures, and the Find Europe will definitely be the arena to do that! If you let your imagination run riot, you could surely envisage the world as an art gallery, housing a picture of Europe composed of many colourful and vivid blobs of paint representating national cultures.

The picture seems quite abstarct before you embark on a journey of discovery and imagine seeing, touching and tasting different colours. That is what Find Europe is bound to help you with! Find Europe is a culture-oriented project with the aim of bringing people together at high quality cultural events across Europe and promoting certain events by drawing our attention to different celebrations and happenings in Europe throughout the whole year.

The Association will live a new life made of active locals, many interested and active members and more cultural events, that are the most important vehicles to take people to know Europe . Members will for sure find in AEGEE the perfect conditions to stay and grow culturally and to become active at local and European level.

It is not only Europe that we're going to find. These are also the solutions. AEGEE has always been visionary when it comes to creating solutions to the existing problems, because our method is not to leave them to grow, but take a closer look and tackle them. So what is the problem that FE project is trying to solve?

To put it short, the application procedure to AEGEE events is too ambiguous in the sense that it doesn't really executes any responsibility from participants applying to events (which at the moment only boils down to filling in an on-line form), as well as does not anyhow guarantee to the organisers that these applicants will realy participate in the event. That creates a continuous problem in a form of no show-ups, which is demotivating for the organisers and for AEGEE project runners.

The SU application procedure has been a great success in this field, but as it also has its specific conditions, deadlines and rules impossible to apply in case of evens running all year round, we decided to devise something more efficient – a division of the year into four parts (seasons) and the application practice in which all the responsibilities will be clearly defined.

Moreover, we are going to make use of such devises as public visibility of applicant locals, special fee for applicants via their local, verifying applications by the local co-ordinator (local FE outgoing responsible) and only then sending them to organisers to include in the selection process. Also a very innovative idea would be special vouchers given out to applicants in return for the 25 Euro deposit, and reversing it upon the arrival of the participant back from the event.

Be ready for special AEGEE season planner – promotion booklet as a great help for you to choose and plan how to find Europe with AEGEE. Apart from this, the most appealing motivator will be the quality of the FE events, whose organisation is going to be carried out according to thematic and logistical guidelines as well as supervised and assisted by the Find Europe Co-ordination team.

The project is surely going to be a highligh of AEGEE activities in the year to come, being in its pilot form a part of the European Identity – AEGEE Yearplan 2004.

Don't you want to become one of the shining blobs of paint in our remarkable European masterpiece and make your local shine like a star on the AEGEE map of Europe ?
Then join us, let's Find Europe together!!

Your Find Europe Team