What is AEGEE

The Association des Etats Généraux des Etudiants de l’Europe – AEGEE, better known as “Forum degli Studenti Europei” in Italian, is one of the largest student (and non-student) associations at the European level. It was founded in 1985 in Paris by founder Franck Biancheri and with the participation of students from Leiden, London, Madrid, Munich, Milan and Paris.

To date, it has grown to about 150 local branches and a total of about 10000 members and is dedicated to organizing youth and student empowerment activities to promote active participation within society. What AEGEE aims to do is to create a space for dialogue, mutual exchange and learning, among peers and others. Currently AEGEE has at the European level almost forty years of activity, several collaborations under its belt, and hundreds of events at the European level where students from all local branches have had the opportunity to meet young young people from different parts of Europe, meet each other, exchange information, and share various experiences. In Italy AEGEE has about twenty Antennae (local branches) some very active, others in their infancy, which have been organizing activities and events in full AEGEE style for many years.

But how does AEGEE carry out these purposes? There are four main means: cultural exchange, thematic projects, personal development of its members, and advocacy and policy. As far as cultural exchange is concerned, AEGEE is a large container of people from all over Europe, with the immeasurable quality typical of AEGEE people: the desire to learn, reflect, have fun and be enriched.

This makes sure that all AEGEE events are organized with a specific goal in mind but that they all have the same common goal: to get to know the person you share the event with, to respect the culture of the host city and country, to enrich your cultural background, to try your hand at the great challenge of learning a new language, or even just a few words. In this framework of interculturality, it is also important to set concrete goals: that is why, every year, an event called EPM (European Planning Meeting) is organized, hosted each time by a different city, which involves the definition of goals, thematic projects and topics of the Focus Areas, thematic areas that are proposed and voted on by the whole network and developed in the sense of giving a topical edge to the Aegean activities and a direction regarding the personal development of the association members so that the social, civic and cultural commitment is well defined and visible.

Last, but not least, is the possibility to find in AEGEE a space where young people can have their say, participating in the activities of working groups, events provided by statute and also within their own local, also developing skills that in few other environments can be exercised. If you are curious to know more about AEGEE, we refer you to the aegee europe website (https://www.aegee.org/) and invite you to read more about the projects being developed within AEGEE-Bergamo through the articles on this site, you may discover a world of initiatives and possibilities from which it will be difficult to choose!