AIESEC

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AIESEC is the largest international student organization worldwide with a total of 780 local committees in 124 countries. AIESEC is particularly well represented in India , Poland , Brazil and Turkey as well as Germany , where there are local committees or initiative groups at 41 locations (universities and technical colleges). Around 40,000 students worldwide volunteer within the organization and enable over 91,000 experiences in almost 7450 organizations, companies and projects.

AIESEC was founded in Stockholm in 1948 by economics students from seven countries ( Belgium , Denmark , Finland , France , the Netherlands , Norway and Sweden ) and grew into a global organization within a few years. Since the focus has expanded over time and students from other fields of study have also joined AIESEC , the abbreviation (formerly: Association Internationale des Etudiants en Sciences Economiques et Commerciales ) became a proper name in the 1990s.

target

The aim of the organization is the promotion of international understanding and the exploitation of the potential of our society; the exact English formulation of the objective is "Peace and Fulfillment of Humankind's Potential". AIESEC is a platform that enables young people to develop themselves further and have a positive impact on society. Two pillars help to achieve these goals:

1. Exchange (exchange)

  • AIESEC organizes and arranges international internships for young people between 18 and 30 years in the areas of management , IT , social affairs or in the education sector in all regions in which there are local committees. Since the aim of the internship is a cultural experience, participants can only do one internship abroad. Via a central portal called AIESEC's Opportunity Portal , you can search for projects all over the world. In 2013 more than 22,000 social internships and 5000 corporate internships were carried out.
  • Exchange of knowledge and know-how within the organization at over 500 regional, national or international conferences annually

2. Leadership Development (leadership development)

  • AIESEC tries specifically to motivate students to take on responsibility and management positions. Accompanying seminars and conferences are intended to help students benefit from their management experience and to exchange ideas with one another. The goal is to train responsible, tolerant and culturally open managers who can take on responsibility in society in the future and have a positive influence. Every year around 27,500 leadership experiences are made possible on the local, national and international side.

History of AIESEC

AIESE, the predecessor organization of AIESEC, was founded in Liège , Belgium in 1946 . AIESEC was officially founded in 1949 with the organization of the 1st International Congress (March 3–6, 1949 in Stockholm ). In the first year, 89 students were given an internship abroad. In 1953, AIESEC began working with the International Chamber of Commerce and UNESCO . In 1955, the 1,000 mark was broken during the internship exchange. In 1960, 2,973 students completed an internship abroad with AIESEC. AIESEC's first permanent headquarters was opened in Geneva in 1961 . In 1963 the participants of the 15th International Congress in Princeton were received by US President John F. Kennedy . During the 16th International Congress in Rome in 1964 , Paul VI. the participants to a private audience in the Vatican . In 1965, Czechoslovakia became the first socialist country to join AIESEC. In 1969 a computer was used for the first time to place interns. Until then, interns were only placed through so-called matching conferences . In 1970 Lufthansa became the official travel partner of the German AIESEC. In order to ensure the quality of his internships, it was decided in 1974 to set the minimum duration of an internship to 6 weeks. In 1971 the head office moved from Geneva to Brussels .

In 1991, the internationally uniform blue logo used today was introduced. It unified the organization's appearance worldwide under one brand. Before that, each country had its own appearance. The orange logo was replaced in Germany. In 1992 representatives were sent to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Brazil. In 1996 AIESEC decided to focus on the internship exchange. In 1997 the internship exchange goes online. In 1998 the umbrella organization AIESEC International moved from Brussels to Rotterdam .

With the internet-based Insight program , internships were increasingly arranged online from 1998 onwards. In 2000 an improved version insight 2 was put into operation. Insight XP was introduced in 2004. This has been replaced by the intranet portal myaiesec.net since 2007 and by experience.aiesec.org on November 6, 2014 . AIESEC completed a total of almost 260,000 internships by 2011.

AIESEC in Germany

The first local committee in Germany was founded by Albert Kaltenthaler in Nuremberg in 1951 . In the same year Cologne and Mannheim followed . On March 19, 1952, AIESEC became an official member of the 4th International Congress in Copenhagen in Germany ; the first chairman was Albert Kaltenthaler. In the following year, the 5th International Congress took place in Nuremberg from March 15 to 23, 1953. Here the Saarland and Yugoslavia were accepted as members of AIESEC. On December 18, 1956, AIESEC Germany was officially registered as an association in the Cologne register of associations . A year later, the Saarland National Committee is dissolved and taken up in Germany.

In 1964, Ludwig Erhard became an honorary curator . Since 1971, Germany has been the country with the most internship positions within the organization. 1974 came the 10,000. foreign intern to Germany and was received by Federal President Walter Scheel . In Germany there were now 25 local committees. In 1985 Germany, with its 45 local committees, was given the task of improving relations with the People's Republic of China . In 1988, 900 students completed an internship in Germany, including the first from China. With the fall of the Wall in 1989, the first two committees in the GDR were founded in Berlin. In 1990 AIESEC in Germany was officially commissioned to set up AIESEC in the GDR. In 1991 the 43rd International Congress in Germany was held under the patronage of Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker . AIESEC in Germany represented both the western and the eastern local committees. In 1993 AIESEC in Germany became a member of the German preparatory committee for the UN social summit and in 1995 represented the students at the summit.

In 2002 AIESEC Germany created the first opportunity for Afghan students to go abroad by setting up AIESEC in Afghanistan. In 2004 AIESEC Germany hosted the 56th International Congress under the patronage of the then Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in Hanover . The first Afghan interns completed an internship in Germany in 2005. In 2013 the number of 2000 exchanges was reached for the first time. After several closings in previous years, the number of local committees fell from around 60 at the beginning of the 2000s to 36 in the summer of 2017.

AIESEC Germany is a founding member of the Association of German Student Initiatives .

Local committees

As of July 2017, there were 36 local committees in Germany; these are listed below according to internal regions :

  • Bavaria : Augsburg, Bayreuth, Munich, Nuremberg, Passau, Regensburg, Würzburg
  • Dragons : Aachen, Bielefeld, Bochum, Bonn, Düsseldorf, Cologne, Münster, Paderborn
  • Fruits : Darmstadt, Frankfurt am Main, Gießen-Marburg, Heidelberg, Kaiserslautern, Karlsruhe, Mainz-Wiesbaden, Mannheim, Stuttgart-Hohenheim
  • Northern Lights : Braunschweig, Bremen, Göttingen, Hamburg, Hanover, Lüneburg
  • Sunrise : Berlin HU, Berlin TU, Dresden, Halle, Jena, Leipzig, Magdeburg

Until it was closed, there were also local committees in Bamberg, Dortmund, Duisburg-Essen, Freiburg, Kiel, Konstanz, Oldenburg, Osnabrück, Rostock, Saarbrücken, Tübingen-Reutlingen, Ulm and Wuppertal. In addition, the Wild West region existed until 2017 , whose local committees were distributed to the Dragons and Fruits regions after the dissolution .

Austria

AIESEC in Austria was founded in 1952 and has eight local committees ( Graz , Innsbruck , Linz , Salzburg and four in Vienna ). In addition, a research group was founded in Klagenfurt in 2011 with the aim of reopening the LC there.

The national board (Member Committee) is based in Vienna and consists of six people. The national board of directors is supported by a team ( National Support Team ) whose tasks are the administration of national issues and projects.

Switzerland

AIESEC in Switzerland was founded in St. Gallen in 1951 and had around 300 members in 2015. There are currently eight local committees in Basel , Bern (founded in 1963), Freiburg im Üechtland (founded in 1967), Geneva (founded in 1958), Lausanne (founded in 1954), St. Gallen (founded in 1951), Zurich (founded in 1957) and Lucerne (2016 founded).

The Member Committee, the national board of directors, has its seat in Bern . Since there are several official languages ​​in Switzerland, the official working language is English.

Afghanistan

The start of the establishment of AIESEC in Afghanistan was a conference in December 2002 called NIFA (New Ideas for Afghanistan). One of the five workshops dealt with the topic of AIESEC. The conference was chaired by the Frankfurt am Main local committee , which was subsequently responsible for pursuing the idea. The first interns left Afghanistan in February 2005 to work in Berlin . At the International Presidents Meeting 2005 it became an official AIESEC country on February 25th . In March 2005 the official MC office was opened in the Mediothek für Afghanistan eV. Marcus Wittig was President of NIFA and thus also the first MCP in Afghanistan . The first elected Member Committee President ( MCP ) was Ahmad Waheed Sahak . The first and so far only local committee is located in Kabul .

Canada

AIESEC in Canada owes its establishment to a request from Donald W. James of AIESEC in the USA for a letter of recommendation. This request reached the Vice President of The House of Seagram Limited , Charles Bronfman , in February 1958 . He found the AIESEC idea so good that he came to the conclusion that Canada should have an independent AIESEC. So on March 25, 1958, he wrote to the chairman of the World University Student's Society , Mel Rothman. After a few exchanges of letters, a letter ended up with Lewis Perinbam of the World University Service of Canada . On November 8, 1958 , AIESEC's first provisional meeting in Canada took place at McGill University in Montreal . Eric W. Kierans, Adam Dickie, Simon St.Pierre, Jean Dagenais, Lionel Simons, Gerald Destounis and Arthur Dalfen, all professors from different departments, were present at this inaugural meeting.

China

There have been several attempts to found AIESEC in the People's Republic of China . The first attempts were made in the 1980s, but they came to a standstill with the Tian'anmen massacre in 1989. In the mid-1990s there were new attempts, supported by AIESECers from Japan , USA , Hong Kong and Germany. The USA and Japan already had exchange programs, but in 1997 students from Germany and Hong Kong set up their first interest group in Shanghai . Another interest group was founded in Beijing the following year . In 2002 China became an official AIESEC member at the International Presidents Meeting in Malta. AIESEC currently has more than 200 members at universities in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Hangzhou and Guangzhou in mainland China who are committed to international exchange.

Romania

AIESEC in Romania was founded in 1992 on the initiative of AIESEC in Austria and has twelve local committees.

Structure of AIESEC

Global and national division

Globally, AIESEC is divided into four regions for administrative, but also for cultural and identification purposes:

  • Middle East and Africa (MEA)
  • Asia Pacific (AP)
  • Europe
  • Americas

Self-management

The self-administration is structured in three stages. Participation up to the age of 30 is possible on the three levels. They are shown below.

Local level

AIESEC is represented at universities in the form of local committees. In a city there can be several local committees, as is currently the case in Berlin at the Technical University and the Humboldt University . A local committee may include several universities and is managed by the Board ( Executive Board , shortly EB ) consisting of a President ( Local Committee President , in short LCP ) and up to six team leaders ( vice president , shortly LCVP is) and Maximum Year is elected by the members of the committee. Each local committee consists of a so-called back office and a front office. The front office processes the programs offered by AIESEC for professional internships (Global Talent, GT for short or Global Entrepreneur, GE for short ) and placement of social internships (Global Volunteer, GV for short ). In addition, a distinction is made between looking after students who travel abroad from the local committee (outgoing) and students who visit the city of the local committee from abroad (incoming). The back office consists of the Finance ( FIN ) and Talent Management ("TM") departments, as well as, in some cases, Marketing ( MKT ) or Reception. All areas are headed by a Vice President or, alternatively, a department head. Each area has several members who take on the work of the corresponding area on a voluntary basis. All members of the local committee meet, usually once a week, in so-called local committee meetings.

In addition, there is the possibility of leading local organizing committees for temporary projects, for example to organize conferences.

National level

All local committees ( Local Committee ; short LC) a country or territory are of a so-called Member Committee ( MC managed), the one-year activity to meet the members of full-time and are elected annually in the period from January to March, usually after the election of new CEO. The Chairman of the Board of Management is the Member Committee President ( MCP ), who presides over a team of six to twelve people, usually made up of national division heads or directors, so-called Member Committee Vice Presidents ( MCVP ). AIESEC Germany has been based in Bonn since 2003 , previously it was Cologne . Its job is to manage and coordinate the work of each local committee. The Member Committee is supported by the National Support Body ( NSB ) and the National Support Team ( NST ). Around 1000 students worldwide work in the respective national MC, mostly full-time. There are other bodies between the local and national levels, such as regional coordinators ( RegioCo ) or the Local Committee Development Support Team ( LCDST ).

International level

AIESEC International ( AI ) forms the global administration of AIESEC and is based in Montreal. The AI ​​consists of a President ( President of AIESEC International , PAI for short), the Vice Presidents for each of the six areas and several Directors who manage and coordinate the global regions. Vinícius Tsugue has been president of AI since July 2014, his predecessor was Rolf Schmachtenberg, and Colombian Ana Saldarriaga has been elected as his successor for 2015/16. There are currently 21 former or current students from 19 nations working in the global team. The AI ​​is supported by the Global Finance and Legal Board ( FLP ) and the Global Support Team ( GST ).

Conferences

The conferences also take place at different levels. There are usually local, regional, national and international conferences.

Regional conferences (ReCos) take place at the local level. These usually last three days and in Germany do not go beyond the regional level. The National Conference ( NatCo ) takes place across Germany and is mostly attended by board members, but some are also open to regular members. About 450 German athletes meet here twice a year. Depending on the member state, the structure of the conferences may differ from the German model.

At the international level, conferences are mostly held within the global regions. At the beginning of a term there is the European Congress ( EuroCo ), at which national board chairmen and a selection of local board chairmen meet. The counterpart to this is the EuroXpro , in which other board members can also participate. The important global event is the International Congress ( IC ), which takes place once a year over a period of around ten days and is usually attended by the national executive boards and selected local executive board chairs from all member states. In 2014 more than 700 students took part in the congress, for 2015 a number of around 1,400 is planned. In addition, all current and elected national board chairmen meet once a year at the so-called International Presidents Meeting ( IPM ) to discuss the future direction of the organization.

Admission of the countries

literature

  • German Committee of AIESEC eV (Ed.): The largest global student organization. AIESEC in Germany. German AIESEC Committee, Bonn 2006.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ About us ( Memento from July 2, 2018 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ https://www.rnz.de/nachrichten/heidelberg_artikel,-Heidelberg-Verein-Aiesec-Im-Einsatz-fuer-den-Austausch-_arid,269348.html
  3. ↑ About us at aiesec.org, accessed October 27, 2019
  4. ↑ https://aiesec.org/about-us
  5. ↑ AIESEC's Opportunity Portal

Web links