Historia vero testis temporum, lux veritatis, vita memoriae, magistra vitae…

(M. T. Cicero, De Oratore 2:36)

"History is the true witness of times, the light of truth, the life of memory, the teacher of life." With these words, the Roman orator Cicero exhorted us to strengthen our arguments by solidly grounding them in lessons from the past. This is the year for us to take a lesson from the past and look at our future with more in our hands than just hope. Our first 20 years are, for AEGEE, the solid basis upon which we continue to build a splendid future.
I feel privileged to write to you here, as a representative of the European board, witness and leader of this process. We have a great opportunity to learn something from the past, from our founding fathers, who were able to manage an association like AEGEE when communication was much more difficult and we had far fewer tools than we do today.
The association in these short years has developed so fast that it is amazing for me to list the challenges we undertook and the innovative ideas we developed, both related to our active participation in society and also to the internal organisation of our association. What is important is that we have held on to our belief in strengthening the European conscience, also defending by all means the lack of national level as a tool to achieve our aims of a united Europe.
Our network has been growing rapidly all these years and expanding ever faster in the Eastern part of Europe. We passed from 7 antennae in 1987 to 260 branches across 43 Countries in 2005. By 1996, there was clearly a need for a body which would "serve and protect" our local branches, helping them to develop and grow - and thus, the Network Commission was born. Three years later, the AEGEE Academy was added, with the mission of organising regular human resources training for the network.
I remember some moments in the past when our association seized the chance to make history - such as the Belgrade student protests in 1996, the Kosovo conflict in 1999, or even a few months ago, when some of our Ukrainian branches helped to monitor the repeat presidential elections there. We showed that we were able to make a difference. Our involvement in civil society and defence of equal opportunities for European students was particularly fruitful in 1997, when our members from Turkish speaking locals successfully lobbied for Turkey's participation in Socrates II. Other outstanding projects included Peace Academy in 1999, Education for Democracy in 2000 and Turkish-Greek Civic Dialogue 2002-2004. Our activities in the field of mobility were equally successful: Find Your Way in 1996, Borderless Europe in 2000 and Quo Vadis Europe? in 2001, just to name a few.
The Summer University project, our greatest milestone in the field of mobility, celebrates a special birthday this year, becoming 18 - and adult. Most impressive of all, however, is the list of achievements in our main field of action: higher education. AEGEE's lobbying work helped the Erasmus programme come into being in 1987. I also think of our participation in the UNESCO Conference on Higher Education in 1998, and the projects Socrates on the Move and Eureca in 2000/1.
History repeats itself, as philosopher Giambattista Vico said. In his opinion, history develops according to three ages - from the age of barbarousness to that of discretion and back again, in an endless cycle. Too often in AEGEE we failed to learn from our own mistakes and we were unable to play a proactive role in civil society. Sometimes we let things pass us by without contributing much to their direction, whereas in other times we were the real promoters of change.
We should grab the chance offered to us by this special year, 2005, to create change and be the progressive factor. It is up to us to break the cycle and create the association we want. Never forget the fact that despite our mistakes in the past - we are still here, ready to build our future.

Happy birthday AEGEE, I wish you another 20 years of success!

Silvia Baita
President of AEGEE-Europe, 2004/5

Silvia Baita was president of AEGEE-Europe from November 2004 until May 2005.


This text is reproduced here with thanks to the editors of the Key to Europe, where this article first appeared.

Copyright © by AEGEE 20 All Right Reserved.

Published on: 2005-06-16 (199 reads)