| | | ACC Bulletin no. 45
December 23rd, 2002
ACC International Programme Office
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Dear <-NAME->
In this issues:
New website, new possibilities
Enlargement Tour
Mjellma Mehmeti, Young European of the Year 2002
Youth2002,
New members,
Calendar
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New website, new possibilities:
A brandnew website of the ACC has been uploaded, and we would like to point at some few improvements.
a) We have created a more modern design and a much more informative website aiming at including the members in the activities to a larger extent. We are still working on some parts of the website though.
b) It is now possible easily to administer and edit the website from many different places. It means that the editing of the website is going to be done by a group of members throughout Europe rather than by only one or two persons. So far, the editing of the individual future activities sections has been given as a task to the organising committees. It means, that e.g. the Europe of Rights CC is edited from Pisa, while the Transylvania CC is edited from Budapest. This counts also for the debate forums linked to the different activities.
Obviously this gives some possibilities. We would like to offer the possibility of establishing thematic pages for the members and others interested at the www.acc.eu.org . It is very easy for us to give one or more members access to edit a certain branch of the website. It could be for example a theme on *non-formal education*, it could be an idea for *a future activity* or it could be some political issue like e.g. the *referenda in the new EU-countries* or *Turkey in the EU* etc.etc. There are many possibilities of course. One may say, that this is already possible to discuss at different groups and forums etc. The difference is, that we can give you access to upload also background material, texts, photos, political treaties and decisions etc. The main point is to make it possible for members of the ACC to be more active in the ACC than has been possible up until now.
c) A special section is dedicated to members only and most of it is protected by a code. As part of this section, you will find what we call The Multplier. The idea of the Mulitplier is, that we would like it to become a store of usefull tools, when members want to set up events. This is where you can find e-mails of the other members in the ACC, find succesful project-descriptions and budgets, which can be used as drafts when you want to set up an event yourself. You will also find material, which is good as enclosures to applications.
Another part of the members section is the forum on The General Assembly 2003. Already now, there are proposals coming in concerning the GA and these proposals are going to be uploaded in near future.
d) Hitherto we have forwarded incoming invitations through this Bulletin. This is not going to be the case anymore, as from now on we are going to upload the invitations to the "invitations received" branch of the members section. There are already some few invitations uploaded.
e) It may be, that you would find the whole website-editing mechanism very smart and a useful tool for your own organisation ? When this is the case, just come back and we will put you in contact with the programmers who developed this tool for geographically wide-spread NGO's.
Still, a lot of material is missing. E.g. there is a lack of photo-documentation on the pages, as photo-work takes a lot of time. We are working on it.
The code is going to be sent to the members in a minute. We expect the code to change regularly.
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Enlargement Tour:
Volunteers of the Youth2002 project was througout spring 2002 assisting the folk high schools in preparing the programme of the summer project Youth2002. One of the tasks was to follow the media in their home countries and try to collect a picture of how the EU-Enlargement debate was taken within these usually nationally defined public realms. We felt the experiences and work of the volunteers should be used even more, and then invited one more time the volunteers and a few more, who have been especially interested in the EU-Enlargement debate. The result was our Enlargement Tour to four Folk High Schools in Denmark. Just one week before the Copenhagen EU-Summit, we did our own small preparatory travel in which the idea (as usual) was, that the debate on the future of Europe should be taken by Europeans in common. The Folk High Schools at the occasion opened their houses for the public and for the ACC in order to try to inspire a debate about the future of Europe, the enlargement and integration processes on the background of other European inputs and perspectives than is usually the case in Denmark. Presentations by approximately ten members (mostly the ACC members among the Youth2002-volunteers) were carried out with succes at Højskolen Østersøen, Rønshoved Højskole, Askov Højskole and Ask Højskole from November 26th to December 2nd. There is every reason to try to continue this kind of open public arrangements with inputs from other countries. This time it was Denmark. The inspiring and very uncommon European dimension of these open arrangements have to be developed further. More material is going to uploaded to the website.
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Young European of the Year 2002:
Mjellma Mehmeti, board member of the ACC, has on December 2nd been awarded by the Heinz-Schwartzkopf-Stiftung:
We can now refer to Mjellma as the "Young European of the Year 2002".
Congratulations to Mjellma and everybody working for the establishing of a European Public realm through the mean of the Community College format.
Encouraged by Hanna Wennerström (Uppsala), the ACC nominated Mjellma in summer 2002. After a careful selection process, interviews etc. the award ceremony could finally take place in Berlin in the Landesvertretung der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg.
After the principal speech of Bundestagspresident Wolfgang Thierse, the award was handed over by the President of the European Youth Parliament, Bettina Carr-Allinson. Bundestagspresident Wolfgang Thierse presented in his speech the point of view, that it is of utmost importance for Europe to establish a European public realm. Consequently, in her speech of thanks, it was only natural when Mjellma Mehmeti replied on this point and referred to the ACC and the format of the Scandinavian Folk High Schools as a convenient tool.
The hand-outs to the media present and the invited guests at the attached reception, presented the reasoning and short-portrait of Mjellma as follows (rapid translation from German):
"Mjellma Mehmeti, the 26-year old Macedonian of Albanian origin, was selected on the background of her merits and extraordinary engagement for youth and in particular for young women and for Bildung [General Education] far beyond borders of her own home country. In spite of her young age Mjellma Mehmeti can refer to a remarkable range of activities. In the beginning of the 90'ies Mjellma Mehmeti was active in the ARK Anti Radjna Kampanja, an initiative against the war and with the aim of peace througout Balkan. Shortly after, Mjellma Meheti was founding the Association for Emancipation, Solidarity and Equality of Women (ESE) in Macedonia and initiated a programme against domestic violence. In 1998 she was part of the working group of the Macedonian Ministry for Work and Social issues for equality of men and women. One year later, Mjellma Mehmeti was co-founder of the initiative Women Waging Peace. Her educational political engagement was founded through many international activities from 1998. She was a co-founder of the ACC Association for Community Colleges, a European Non-Governmental organisation working for the improvement of a European public realm. As the latest, Mjellma Mehmeti took part in the organizing of the Youth2002 initiative in Denmark aiming at establishing the model of the Scandinavian Folk High Schools all over Europe.
Since September Mjellma Mehmeti is a student at the University of Aarhus in Denmark and her activities are based there."
Read more about the Heinz-Schwartzkopf-Stiftung at the website www.heinz-schwarzkopf-stiftung.de -including the speech of Bundestagspresident Wolfgang Thierse.
An Albanian holding a Macedonian citizenship, partly picking up her ideas in Scandinavia, and then rewarded in Berlin. It was a great pleasure to be in Berlin that day ;-) Mjellma is to be found at mjellma@acc.eu.org
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Youth2002
The latest development within the Youth2002 as an organsation and as a project would be the following:
On December 19th was the General Assembly of the Youth2002 which finally closed down the Youth2002 as an organization. The spirit of the project is far from dead though. Alongside the process of closing the organization, there has been work done with the aim of opening a new initiative Youth200X. Jesper Nielsen has been and is still our representative in the committee working on the new initative. It is quite unclear, how exactly the new initiative is going to be put together.
A hand-out describing the Youth2002 project has been printed and released in connnection with the EU-Summit in Copenhagen. The hand-out is downloadable from the www.youth2002.org . The unclear future situation of the Youth2002 is unfortunately mirrored in the hand-out, as only two of the founding organizations are mentioned as contacts. The General Assembly decided to change this immediately on the website of the Youth2002 just as the www.youth2002.org website is going to link visitors to all the founding partners of the Youth2002. So, within short time the beautiful handout is downloadable in an even better version.
The website may be handed over to a new organisation (or network) Youth200X sometime in the future, if all partners agree upon it. Assets of the association Youth2002 were few and means already allocated, which means the GA didnt find much to share among the partners.
Within the eventual new initiative, the ACC (a) is going to continue working for the central position of the residential school format, (b) is going to work for the European dimension of the project (European public realm, development of preconditions for European citizenship), (c) is going to work for involving more and experienced partners (very often meaning young people) in the project and (d) we are going to work for identifying the spirit of the project as Non-Governmental rather than as Governmental.
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Welcome to new members:
Dace Salmina
Ljubica Nedelkoska
Danut-Adrian Casoinic
Madalina Elana Visan
Mette Buchreitz
Esther Buchreitz
Marie-Louise Ebert Lauritsen
Deniz Guvensoy
Eugenio Garcia
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Calendar:
November 1st-8th: Hannes Sildnik representing the ACC at the seminar on "conflict management in international youth exchanges, Vienna.
November 6th: John Petersen speaking for the Alliance of European Voluntary Service Organizations, Rønshoved Højskole, Denmark
November 8th: Meetings, Morten Kröger, Gitte Juul Johansen (South Denmark Brussels office) Jørgen Olsen and John Petersen. Discussing the FECC, Brussels
November 9th-11th: Lucie Ciskova, Student and journalist, visiting the ACC International Programme Office.
November 20th: Tomas Balco presenting the ACC at the European Youth and Sport Forum, Aarhus, DK. Eva Bobowska present as well.
- Allan Siao Ming Witherick, Conchi Gallego, Helena Soares Silva and ?. at the Spanish Youth Council meeting ?
- Conchi Galleog in local TV, Madrid, as an ACC secretary.
November 26th: Enlargement Tour, Denmark. Presentations at Højskolen Østersøen by Eva
Valvo (Pisa), John Petersen (Aabenraa), Conchi Gallego (Madrid), Jan-Christoph Napierski (Krakow), Dasa Bolcina (Trieste), Hannes Sildnik (Johve), Hanna Wennerström (Uppsala) and Helena Soares (Espinho).
November 27th: Enlargement Tour. Presentations at Rønshoved Højskole by Eva
Valvo (Pisa), Jan-Chrisoph Napierski (Krakow), John Petersen (Aabenraa), Conchi Gallego (Madrid), Mjellma Mehmeti (Skopje), Dasa Bolcina (Trieste), Hannes Sildnik (Johve), Hanna Wennerström (Uppsala) and Helena Soares (Espinho).
November 28th: Enlargement Tour. Presentations at Askov Højskole by Eva Valvo (Pisa), John Petersen (Aabenraa), Conchi Gallego (Madrid), Mjellma Mehmeti (Skopje), Dasa Bolcina (Trieste), Jan-Christoph Napierski (Krakow), Hannes Sildnik (Johve), Hanna Wennerström (Uppsala) and Helena Soares (Espinho).
November 29th - December 1st: ACC future seminar, Højskolen Østersøen, Aabenraa
December 1st: Board meeting of the ACC, Højskolen Østersøen, Aabenraa
December 2nd: Enlargement Tour. Presentations at Ask Højskole by Eva
Valvo (Pisa), Laszlo Dani (Budapest), Dasa Bolcina (Trieste), Jan-Christoph Napierski (Krakow), Hannes Sildnik (Johve), Hanna Wennerström (Uppsala) and Helena Soares (Espinho).
December 2nd Mjellma Mehmeti awarded, "Young European of the Year 2002 by the Heinz-Schwartzkopf-Stiftung, Berlin. Ceremony in the Landesvertretung der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg. Principal speech by Bundestagspräsident Wolfang Thierse.
December: Mjellma Mehmeti (Skopje) exposed in Macedonian and Albanian media explaining about the background of her award.
December 6-12th Maja Mezgec at the Session on Global Youth Work in Strasbourg (European Youth Center).
December 11th: Jeske de Kort and Naomi Woltring (Netherlands) visiting the ACC Office as a preparation to Naomis volunteership.
December 13th: John Petersen presenting the ACC at Højskolen Østersøen, Aabenraa, DK.
December 19th: Youth2002 General Assembly, in which the Youth2002 as an organization closed down.
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Wish you all a
Merry Christmas and
a Happy New Year
John Petersen, chairman
ACC International Programme Office
Flensborgvej 48, A6
6200 Aabenraa DK
ph. +45 7363 0043
ph: +45 2425 3068
fax +45 7363 0043
www.acc.eu.org
office@acc.eu.org
- With the support of the European Community budget line "Support for international non-governmental youth organisations"
- The Opinions expressed by the organisation do not necessarily reflect the position of the European Community, nor does it involve any responsibility on its part. | | |
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