The 2011-2012 Executive Board Report

Here it is...

Open publication - Free publishing - More 11 12

Please have a look at the above link, there you will find what went down during the just concluded term.... It's awesome, trust me....

IC Kenya 2011 XP

20th August 2011 was the date and KICC was the venue. Virtually all countries that AIESEC is present had sent at least one representative to this congress. The International Congress(IC) is the biggest it can go as AIESEC. This is one event where all MCPs, LCPs and PAI not to mention AI is well represented. If one wants to see the full picture of AIESEC physically, the IC is the picture that one needs to have a glimpse at.

Looking to the left, to the right, to the top and to the bottom of KICC, one could see young people from 100 countries located in all continents of the world, all excited to be members of AIESEC. I must admit, I have always told people that AIESEC is big but experiencing the bigness of AIESEC was something else altogether. Unfortunately very few guys out of the 60 members of AIESEC Egerton were present.

Opening Ceremony

In the opening ceremony that was between 09:00-12:00, we listened to speeches from the Vice President of the Kenyan Government, the MCP AIESEC Kenya and the PAI….yeah you heard it right, the current PAI was in the house. It was nice to see her physically. I mean, as part of the EB, you see a lot of publications in myaiesec.net for AI but you can't really picture the real persons behind the publications. And the more interesting part was when the guy chairing the session said that the PAI has a security team deployed around him/her in such occasions. It might be a useless fact but it's good to know for the hell of it.

Youth Forums

The session that was just before the lunch break was known as 'Youth Forums'. This is where all the delegates engage in a forum about leadership, who inspires us as citizens of the world and we were joined by four invited guests from DHL and the Corporate world to give us their perspectives into the topics in discussion. My defining moment was when the chair shot a random question that anyone in the conference centre could answer….I shot up my hand from the second floor to answer. I gave my answer and the 'whole world' applauded my response. Take note of the fact that I used the words 'the whole world'. This is because anyone who made a contribution in that session had the attention of representatives from all over the world. You can imagine how Obama felt when he was addressing American citizens in his inauguration speech knowing that virtually the whole world was paying attention. But it was until I was in the bus on my way back to Nakuru from Nairobi that it occurred to me that I had addressed the whole world during my one day experience at the IC. Funny huh?

Global Village

In the afternoon session, it was time for the Global Village. The Global Village involves setting up stands to showcase the culture of the country you come from. For example, in the Kenyan stand we showcased Irio, Maasai artifacts and those in the desk had dressed the African way.

Next to the Kenyan stand was the AIESEC in UK stand while on our left was AIESEC in Turkey.(Hope that gives you an impression of the arrangement). I tasted chocolate all the way from you tell me….can't even remember whether it was from Ukraine or Portugal….I shook hands with AIESECers all the way from Greece and you could realize that you had a lot of things in common. The session made the world to feel truly like a global village.

Then we went back into the conference centre which is more than an auditorium…..this time to watch the Global Village presentations. We listened and watched rollcalls made by all the countries present. This involved countries like Russia singing their national anthem to us and you name it. You can watch videos in you tube by the way if you realy want to see part of what I'm talking about. That marked the end of the opening ceremony and the attention shifted to Multi Media University(MMU) where the plenary sessions were kicking off the following day.

FYI

Tonnes of photos are in FaceBook and YouTube and you should browse and have a look incase you joined AIESEC after the IC…

And by the way, we now have a new myaiesec.net which can be accessed using this link (http://www.test.myaiesec.net) I' ve logged in once and I think its super awesome. The new @.net will mean that we shall be able to access our @aiiesec.net email accounts directly just like you access your other @gmail.com email account.

We'll keep you posted as soon as we get a briefing from our LCP who as you very well know was in the IC from the beginning to the end(10 days)….we shall keep you posted…as for now keep the 'blue bloods' spirit high. We are the true blue blood aka real AIESECers …..

Comm & IM Crew,

          11/12.

LEADERSHIP VS RELATIONSHIPS

(Disclaimer: This post is based on the opinion of the author and should not be taken to necessarily mean the opinion or beliefs of AIESEC Egerton as a whole.)

Since I joined AIESEC in Egerton, I must say I've learnt a lot by doing a lot. But little did I know that this was just the tip of the iceberg. I have a couple of areas I needed to learn about. Obviously when you produce good stuff in an organization, you in one way or another trigger some attention towards your line of duty. Now, ifyou are in the introduction to AIESEC stage or better still, in the taking responsibility stage(TR), then this article is not meant exactly for you.

This post is meant for those in the Leadership role(LR). Yeah you had it right, those in the LR level. This is because when you are in that level in the AIESEC experience, what you do or say can either build or tarnish the image of AIESEC in your respective LC or MC. I don't mean to be harsh or naïve but as indicated in the title, leadership and relationships don't mix. Relationships in this context mean "an emotionally close friendship, especially one involving sexual relations".

In public offices, (at least I experienced this when I was in primary school) a married husband and wife are not allowed to work in the same school. Among the values of AIESEC is activating leadership and demonstrating integrity. How can a leader demonstrate integrity when he keeps getting into 'relationships' with members in his/her LC? Now I know some of us are wondering 'why is it an issue as long as you keep it well managed? My answer is simple, when you get into a relationship with someone, things cease to be business as usual. Your business becomes the business of the other.  And this leads into a conflict of interest. As a leader your interests should be first and foremost, to uphold the interests of the entity you are leading, which in our case happens to be AIESEC.

Now I know AIESEC is very involving and I also know no one is an island. Everyone of us needs someone to keep us going every once in a while. So my advice is simple, if you must get into relationships while in the LR stage, find someone in another LC or MC. That way, the risk of conflict of interest is minimized. Leadership is about guiding, influencing and leading people, and take note of the word people( not a person) but relationships are about one person being with another. Leaderships involves taking care of the interests of everyone while a relationship is about taking care of the interests of someone.

In conclusion, lets take stock of the many examples of good leaders who fell/got into scandals because of not acting right when it came to relationships. Some were even forced into resignation. You don't want to be forced to quit do you? I won't mention names due to the nature of this blog but I know we all have good examples of such leaders in our minds already. But again this post meant to act as a thought leader for those currently in the LR stage and those who will join this stage in the AIESEC cycle in the future. In one way or another, this topic will affect you and you need to know how to deal with this.

-By Comm. & IM team, 2011/2012

The end of the beginning….

It has been one full semester of hard work in rejuvenating the aiesec experience in egerton university…so far so good although more efforts need to be made in the main campus… seems the aiesec fire has been spread to town campus but the source has been getting colder and colder. That not withstanding, with the new breed/crop of EB members are showing signs of nothing less that a breathtaking year for aiesec egerton. Given that four out of the total EB seven are currently acting in the capacity of the portfolios they have been elected to assume office to…by this I mean, their predecessors were either themselves or were nowhere to be seen. Come to think of this, it is when it's completely dark that the light is about to set in…

I always like to tell my fellow aiesecers when the going gets tough and they start to utter not so fair comments about the future; I usually tell  them, aiesec is a brand that is destined/designed to excel and it's just a question of who will be in the drivers seat when the excel process takes place. Another thing many people fail to understand/comprehend is that real "progress is a slow process…" (funny enough I head that phrase in one of 50cents songs). Unfortunately most of us youths' expect to join today and see results tomorrow. It just doesn't work like that. Even those who win the lotteries will tell you it's not so easy as it may seem.

I think the thing with aiesec that makes it to be destined to succeed is the fact that it is based on uniform organizational structure. The organization itself being institutions of higher learning; universities to be precise. It is in universities that you expect to find the crème de la crème of the society. Any organization based on a standard structure will succeed all day any time. Aiesecers has gone ahead and come up with it's own culture overtime. Another stronghold of aiesec is it's online platform-myaiesec.net. This platform ensures that the knowledge management takes place all day anytime as long as you have internet access and a machine. I say machine because nowadays we have phones which do what a computer does if not better. This online platform ensures/will ensure that each new generation of aiesecers have a faster learning curve and don't spend time re-inventing the same wheel that was invented by past aiesecers who went ahead to be alumni's.

Anyway, the objective of this write up is to syke up my fellow aiesecers and the potential members of aiesec out there. There are alot of awesome opportunities in aiesec and the faster you connect your strengths to the opportunities the faster your journey to success will be. Aluta continua or so it's said…lets continue the good works, lets impact the society like never before. The laws of the kingdom are simple, 'give and you shall receive….infact above, exceedingly and abundantly, shaken together and running over'- like my pastor likes to say……

- By SK Wanjiru

Progress report/updates!

It's interesting how much progress we can achieve when we work together. Sometimes we learn something about ourselves in the most of awkward situations that we never imagined. Take me for example, the other day the LCP was not around without us knowing and the TM too....and here we had an MSS scheduled to take place in less than an hours time. Something in me told me, 'step up' and chair the meeting the way you feel best. I did just that and guess what? I discovered I love presenting/informing people with relevant content which I'm in a position to collect and present. In short what I'm saying I intend to participate more in the MSS's all this after being forced to be in charge of an MSS when the one in charge was not around...

Away from that, alot has been happening like we are working on a roll call exclusively for AIESEC Egerton...heard the song and it was nothing short of electric.

The website is in the final stages of development actually awaiting being hosted by a company owned by one of our alumni. The Gentle feet walk has less than ten days before it takes place and we are looking forward to our EB elections. We also intend to be having a presentation made in every MSS by one of the members. Last week I made a presentation on 'Personal Branding' which was in summary about what is a brand,branding and Aiesec as a brand. This week I have in mind making a presentation on 'The Leadership Challenge'...obviously leadership is a broad topic and I would be fooling you if I said I will cover the whole concept. What I intend to do is to talk about the skeleton of the leadership. The members can fill in the structure afterwards if they get challenged.

The other thing I've observed is how easily ideas flow when you step forward and commit to take a certain responsibility....

. I'm leaving you with the words of the MCP 2010/2011..."AIESEC is like a supermarket, you get in, pick as much as you can...."

- By SK Wanjiru



Here we are..our current state...how it has been...

Aiesec Egerton is in the process of doing what we call 're-loading' our communications portfolio. The good thing is that as I write this post today,I was informed that yesterday the first round of reviews for those applying for the EB was carried out. Leadership development being the core of the AIESEC experience, we can't help but wish those who are keen on joining the EB the best of luck.

Communication is what makes or breaks an organization and AIESEC EGERTON is very much aware of that, so guys please watch this space. We are transforming the way we communicate to you and in the short term coming future, you will definately see and feel the change....change is in the pipeline.