Short description day 1!!!

Hi everybody :)

Today I met with Nathan to write the short description of the ELAYS that we have to send to Dennis so that he can send it afterwards to his collegues in Latin America..our network starts getting bigger !!;)

What came up after more or less 2 hours of working is probably the best short description we have ever done, finally our ides about the ELAYS came up clearly!

What we thought is the reason for that change is that right now we are really into the Elays... it is becoming part of our lives more than it was before , we never stop thinking about it and that makes us much more productive.

Well, that's what I felt I wanted to share with you all ;)

Thanks for reading our blog :)

Alessia (co-president elays)

Meeting 1 after the EYS '09

Excited, tired, amazed and totally convinced that we have to work hard and fast....

... to realize the ELAYS as we envisage it.

This is like we felt when we came together at noon today to have lunch together in Geneva. With we, we always mean the ELAYS team (the Organisational Committee). There were so many things to discuss. We should get a short description together to send it to Dennis, from Ashoka. We should discuss the inputs and comments etc. that we got from the participants at the EYS '09 working group from Sunday. We had to discuss the concept of the workshops. I could go on and on with the list. The result is a really big list of things that we need to do till next week. ONLY till next week.. What comes the weeks after that... wouldn't fit into this blog.

Well, so far so good.. or not?

You still don't know what I am talking about, do you?

In that case: for all that never heard of the ELAYS before, here, a short explanation:

-> First of all it is a vision.

A vision of a new style of cooperation between the youth of two continents: Latin America and Europe. ELAYS shall be the initialising event to hopefully engage both the Latin Americans and the Europeans together in the same projects (that will be chosen by a jury of experts prior to the event).

The goal mentioned above we want to realise through four days of:

• workshops
• panel discussion
• teambuilding events
• working groups
• social events
  
• and a lot discussing whenever there is time
• public evening (guest speakers, food, discussion)
  
• a business trip for the Latin Americans, in order to meet with NGOs and OIs in different Euopena cities and present them their project ideas

The details are yet to be fixed and we are looking forward to an intense and successful preparation period... and of course, we are happy to get critics, comments and thought that you might want to share with us!


There are other positive things to mention:

• the newly found Team-members. We have one from Romania, one from Switzerland, one from the UK, one from Bolivia and one from Colombia.
  
• Others will help as as far as they can, but can't take part in the team. Thank you all for that effort! We need you all!

• We will probably have a partnership with Ashoka fixed at the end of the week! Then we can go on and look for sponsors.
  
• Also the NGO Peace Child is willing to help us with the training of the facilitators of the workshops and the monitoring of the projects, once they're established.
  

I hope that with this post ELAYS has become a little bit clearer to you...

If it hasn't and ELAYS is as mysterious as ever, don't worry! It's a complex and big thing and unfortunately difficult to descripe in a few sentences.

We will definitely try to continue posting and inform you in the next weeks regularly.

All the best, Nathan (co-president ELAYS '10)

Our new blog!!!

Hello everyone!!

This is our new great blog!But....uhm...actually you don't know who we are and what the blog is about...don't worry I ll tell you in the next lines ;)

We are a team of young students members of EUforIA that stands for EUROPEANS UNITED INFORMED ACTION.
The question that someone reading this would now ask is..."What is EUforIA ??"...well that's actually a good question before I tell you what this blog is about.

EUforIA :

Where? GENEVA based organisation coming soon in other European countries

When? Not so much time ago...just since Spring 2007

Who? Founded by 6 European students who met in an exchange year

Now the big question is WHAT ARE EUforIA's GOALS?

EUforIA s goals include but are not limited to the following:

1. Educate and inform young people about global challenges
2. Stimulate youth to become active and to get involved
3. Encourage multiple points-of-view and critical thinking
4. Cultivate a sense of global responsibility and solidarity within European youth
5. Communicate messages in ways that appeal to young people
6. Promote informed action, responsibility, solidarity
7. Strengthen public recognition of young leaders visions

Go check http://www.euforiaction.org/ to find much more information ;)

So far EUforIA organised 4 successfull events :

1. EYS08 in Geneva
2. EYW on Migration and intercultural dialogue
3. EYD Concump(ac)tion 2009
4. EYS09

It was actually today when we were in the closing cerimony of the EYS09 that I told Nathan ( soon you'll know who he is...) that we could create a blog where we could share with you all the pre-event of the next big EUforIA event which we are organising.

That's more or less what happened some hours ago...right now I am here in my wonderful room writing to you and I am enthousiastic about it and also Nathan was even if he didn't know I was going to do it so fast :P

Let's go back to the event ...

The event we are organising it is the ELAYS,EUforIA Latin America Youth Summit,a 4 days event which will take place during the last days of April - beginnning of May 2010 in Geneva.

What the organising team of the Elays is going to do is to share with you the whole organisation process from now till the event.

We will try to tell you as much as we can about the organisation and much more...yeah,much more because I think that this should be a space where we can be free to tell you whatever we need to tell you about our committment,our passions,our difficulties,our challenges etc.etc.etc.

BUT...WHAT IS THE ELAYS ABOUT???

Well...you'll find out in the next posts that will be written :P ...be patient and if you are not maybe you can find out some info on the EUforIA web site!!!

I hope that this blog would be interesting for all of you and for the other EUforIAns who can follow our work step by step :)

Next episode...coming soon..;)

Alessia (co-president ELAYS)