Network Meeting in Malta

Article posted: 13.04.09

Julia Laurén

5-8 March 2009, Network Meeting in Malta

General things

The network meeting took place in the beautiful island of Malta. When we arrived people from AEGEE-Valletta picked us up from the airport. We stayed at three star Hotel Alexandra in the city of St. Julians. The rooms were usually for three people. My roommates were two wonderful girls one from Riga, Latvia and the other one from Vienna, Austria. We had breakfast and lunch at the hotel restaurant. Every evening we also had either dinner or some snacks. There were around 35 participants all over the Europe. Everything during the event was very well organised and all the organisers were very warm and friendly.

Malta is a really beautiful country with its light yellow buildings and clear blue water. We got a chance to take a tour around the island by bus and visit the capital of Malta, Valletta. We also had short city tour in St. Julians.

Programme

The program was very interesting. I’m not sure if all the participants could say the same but I was able to combine some of the program with my studies. We had five trainers with their own special fields, two Maltese sociologist gave a lecture and we had many workshops.

Thursday

On Thursday we began the network meeting with a lesson about Malta and Maltese language. Then we had a short city tour in St. Julians. In the evening we had the official opening of the network meeting. After that we had a welcome party at a bar nearby.

Friday

We began Friday with breakfast and ice-breaking games. Then we talked about our expectations about the network meeting. We had two workshops and one lecture on Friday. All the workshops during the NWM were in groups of 5-6 people. In the first workshop we took a look on Live barometer and found out how youth had answered concerning EU and their own spare time. The point was also to find out how few people are involved in NGOs.
Second workshop was about problems we can find in AEGEE-antennas and how to solve them. The lecture of the day was about AEGEE’s Y Vote project and project management in general. The lecture was by Dragan Stojanovski, the president of AEGEE. In the evening we had a Maltese dinner at a restaurant and afterwards again party in another bar nearby.
Saturday

On Saturday we had an introduction about AEGEE by Manos Valasis. After that trainer Kristina Cernousovaite told us about Youth in Action programme and European voluntary service and we had a chance to ask some questions. Our Network meeting in Malta was supported by European commission’s Youth in Action programme. This part was very interesting because I had never heard of these two before.

The main topic of the first workshop was how to fund European youth work. Some of the groups thought about fundraising in general and some more an AEGEE basis. This part was a little disappointment because there were no new and fresh ideas.

The second workshop had an idea to find out “How European do Maltese feel” and do they know about European parliament election on June. First we made up questions in small groups and then we made street interviews. It was a lot of fun and we got very interesting answers. In general young people liked EU and wanted to vote, older ones didn’t like EU and most of them didn’t even plan to vote. Many older people seemed to have fears and younger people found EU as a possibility. I was a bit disappointed that we didn’t go through the results of different groups. But otherwise this was the best workshop of the NWM for me.

Later two Maltese sociologists gave us a lecture about “How European do Maltese feel”. We found out some basic facts about Malta’s EU membership, some theories of europeanisation and the role of non-governmental organisations in civil society networking. In the end we also had a chance to ask about Maltese culture and which problems does Malta as a country have. This part was very interesting for me because I was able combine it with my social sciences studies but I guess some people found this part quite boring.
In the evening we had European night and after that we went to another bar nearby.

Sunday

Before lunch we had feedback, evaluation and closure of NWM. It was luckily quite informal because after three long days we were all quite tired. After lunch we had a tour by bus around Malta (not the whole island but some parts). It was really nice to see more than just St. Julians. In the evening we had a farewell party again in another bar nearby. Altogether very good, fun and interesting event!