National Meeting of EuroPeers Poland

On 19-21 April, the spring meeting of Polish Europeers network took place. We returned to our favourite Konstancin-Jeziorna, commonly known for the villas of rich Varsovians and, for us Europeers, for the excellent bread at the ‘Taira i Leliwa’ hotel and intensive weekends spent taking action and planning the next Europeers activities. 

We decided to keep with the convention established at the previous meetings i.e. to focus  more creation and concrete action, rather than just talking about planning.

We set up a padlet where each of the Europeers present in Konstancin dissected a concrete action plan for their own event. Beforehand, there was a chance to share our own ideas and concerns about what might stand in the way of making these actions happen. What are we planning? There was plenty of different ideas:  from classic workshops at school to new board games or film screenings.

In order to move away from as much paperwork as possible and to focus on concrete actions – we decided to change the way we report about the events, which already happened – from now on we only focus on reporting about them  on our Discord.

We were also visited by a friend – Lukas from Europeers Germany, who is on the Erasmus + programme at the Warsaw University of Technology this semester. He told us more about the German network, in which he has been active for years. We will definitely put some of the good practices of our neighbors presented by him into life.

There was also time to find out all the ‘news’ from the National Agency. We were visited by Julita who is in charge of the DiscoverEU programme – the latest edition is aimed at 18-year-olds born between 2005 and 2006. The lucky winners get a free ticket for rail travel in Europe (except on islands like Cyprus or Malta. There, you can of course fly as part of the programme), this trip can last 30 days, with the travel/movement itself a maximum of 7 days. Two ticket options are possible: flexible and fixed. The programme is trying to be more inclusive, so it is also possible to go with a mentor.

Magda from the National Agency shared with us the changes to the solidarity corps programme. From now on it is possible to go on a short individual volunteering even after a long volunteering project – the only rule is that collectively all trips cannot exceed 12 months in length. Did you know that there is also a humanitarian volunteering programme and it is available for people aged up to 35? So if you are 30 and missed your ESC chance, prepare yourself to apply! To get on it, you have to register on the programme’s website, complete online training and then a week-long residential course in one of three European cities. Then a pool opens up (as with ESC) for short- and long-term humanitarian trips. Choose from trips to countries in South America or, for example, Nepal.

As a lot of new members have joined us, we have also put together information on programmes (i.e. ESC, solidarity projects, DiscoverEU and youth exchanges) so that everyone goes away equipped with the so-called “Europeers’ toolbox”. – all the necessary information that, as an ambassador of the programmes – we should be able to share with others.

We ended the intensive meeting with reports from members about recent events we had attended: a couple of people were in Brussels in April, others told about the well-being training in Finland, and we also heard a report about the recent international Europeers training held in Bucarest, Romania.

To learn with and from us, don’t forget to follow our activities under the events tab and drop by on Instagram: @europeers_pl!