Experience with AIESEC
Hi readers! Welcome to my new blog on another experience I would like to share with you. If you are reading a blog on my profile for the first time, I’m Pabasara, a 2nd year IT undergraduate, dream chaser and a nature lover.
Today, I’m going to share with you my AIESEC experience that I started once I entered my university, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. If you don’t know what AIESEC is, it’s a worldwide non-profit, non-political, independent youth-run organization for young people to explore and develop their leadership potential. More on AIESEC.
The reason I joined AIESEC is to explore myself, the world and spend my youth meaningfully. On the other hand, I wanted a platform to perform other than my academic works since from school time; I had something different than learning what is taught in the classroom. So with that intention, I joined AIESEC 2 years from now as a student member of my entity AIESEC Colombo South. There are seven entities in Sri Lanka, and there are also several initiative groups under those entities.
Newbie meetup
The first event that I attended with AIESEC was the newbie meetup held in our university premises in the civil auditorium at a pleasant evening with a set of enthusiastic individuals. There, we were given the knowledge of what AIESEC is, how far we can go with AIESEC, and what opportunities we have if we join AIESEC.
Since I desired to join AIESEC already, it was a good introduction for me to ensure that my decision was a good one.
LEAD CS 6.0
After the recruitment, the largest conference of the entity, LEAD CS, was held in February 2020 if I’m not mistaken, for the 6th time. It was where I got the practical knowledge on separate functions Incoming Global Volunteer (iGV), Outgoing Global Volunteer (oGV), Outgoing Global Talent (oGTa), Outgoing Global Teacher (oGTe), and other back-office functions. I was in the matching team, which falls under iGV, at the training session but ended up being a Customer Experience Panelist 0_0
Since we were new to the university and as well as the organization, most of the faces were strange for us. This photo is the best example of that. All the faces in the photo constantly met with the events and the organizing committees, and now we laugh at our so strange actions and behaviors at each other on that day.
This is our out-boundary activity team, 7ups with our faci. There were different games to give the practical knowledge on AIESEC leadership qualities which are self-awareness, empowering others, being solution-oriented and being a world citizen.
This event is memorable, I received my sugar cube with some sweet chits in it and there were several funny challenges for those who broke the rules of the conference and they are unforgettable.
TrainX 20.21
After all these inductions, I selected iGV as my function, and TrainX was the training session for that function. We actually followed all the processes happening in a volunteering project, including company approaches and interviews using mock data and resources. The whole iGV community(around 120 individuals in iGV) was divided into groups and assigned for projects. Mine was the project Jungle Book. There were around ten members in my team, and I was selected as the leader for my team and proceeded. This happened actually during the first quarantine period in 2020 lying on around March, April & May.
So, in TrainX 20.21, we got the fully functional knowledge and ended up with a bunch of training sessions and experiences. My team name was Kingdom Youth: still wondering whether we didn’t have any other name smarter 🙄
Those are some pages we prepared for EPs (Exchange Participants) as an awareness booklet when they come for an exchange.
CXP Panel 20.21
Well, this is not my first interview; however, I was selected as a Customer Experience Panelist for Standards for the term 20.21. We were a team of 3; the task was to communicate between Team Leaders and the iGV CXP Vice President. There I was assigned several jobs; the very first one is mentioned below.
Beach Cleanup Day
It was 19th September 2020, the World’s Beach Cleanup Day. I attended the beach cleanup event with a set of volunteers from a few other entities and a group of my university friends. It was partnered up with Perl Protectors, a well-known volunteer-based organization.
Article : World Cleanup Day marked in Sir Lanka
Impact Conference 2020
This was my first national conference experience. Since everything went virtually, this was a virtual event on leadership and personality development on three days. I attended as a delegate representing my entity in a situation where virtual sessions were enthusiastic about attending. It was a pretty cool experience with funny activities, talent shows, and intra entity challenges. I should mention that this conference was good guidance for me to plan and execute the virtual projects that I was selected for the OCs later. Mentioned below is a status update I published on my Facebook account expressing my opinions on the session.
I was at IMPACTCo 2020!
Being an AIESECer is a rare opportunity where you can throw yourself out of your comfort zone. Every step you take as an AIESECer leads you to a different level. As a world citizen, your impact towards the globe matters hard to enjoy your river of life. Understanding that and the curiosity to be a delegate of a National Conference I thought, “I will be at IMPACTCo 2020”.
It was an amazing lifelong experience where I refreshed and rebuilt my life-hacks to find the best version of myself. The platform was open for us to navigate our mindset and share them with an audience made out of amazing personalities worthwhile to sit with a notepad and listen to their stories. Following are few of the points that were noted down on my notepad.
>> It’s not all about winning, It’s about playing.
>> Positivity is all that matters.
>> Trust your people. Be there for your people. Never disappoint them.
>> Legacy! Make sure everything you know stays and it can better together.
>> It’s mostly about WHO you are and WHAT you can bring.
Attending IMPACTCo 2020 I want to share with you that, it doesn’t matter what you don’t know about yourself yet. Be brave and experiment.
So, I’m grateful to my entity AIESEC CS Members, and all the great personalities AIESEC Sri Lanka behind for making IMPACTCo 2020 a benchmark!
#AIESEC#AIESEClk#MCSriLanka#ReadytoTranformReality#MakingtheImpossiblePossible#MCLions2021
At the end of this event also, I received a lot of sweet messages to my virtual sugar cube showing some love and they are memorable.
EARTH 10.0
EARTH 10.0 is a volunteering project under SDG 13: Climate action. I was privileged to be in the organizing committee with a set of youngsters. Basically, the project happened in Dehiattakandiya and Patna-Deniyaya. A tree-planting campaign of 2500 trees in two school premises, lake cleanups, waterfall cleanups, tree plantation challenges and competitions, awareness sessions were held, remarking a significant impact in our entity history.
After completing the project, I wrote a separate blog describing all the events with memorable photos.
LEAD CS 7.0
Previously I mentioned LEAD CS 6.0. This is 7.0, where I was selected as an OC member for events. We conducted an induction for our new initiative group AIESEC in Rajarata. Unfortunately, we had to hand over the OC for a new set of individuals since those days we didn’t have the possibility to conduct a physical conference with the pandemic situation, and the term was concluded. As a team we had some funny team bonding events within the OC such as gossip weeks where we got to know each others better 😶. Now LEAD CS 8.0 is being organized with other extraordinary events in CS history.
Volunteering with LETTSEE
I engaged in another volunteering project as an international volunteer with AIESEC in SYSU Mainland of China. The project’s purpose was to develop the English language skills of migrant children in China. More than a project, I met a lot of friends, and later we worked in the same organizing committees representing our countries.
Again, sugar cube were memorable.
Pathfinder, Overhaul & IDEALIZE
Pathfinder and Overhaul were two separate events that I participated as a delegate. I remember those two events well since I won some giveaways and competitions that were held with those programs. In 2020, I won a giveaway from Chaki Illustrations for active participation in Pathfinder. I received an illustrated portrait of mine.
Overhaul was held recently, and there was a flyer designing competition on a particular topic, and I won the creator award.
IDEALIZE was an all island ideathon on mobile app development. I joined with my team and we were selected for semifinals.
Actually AIESEC was covering up almost all the areas that I wanted to explore. So most of my efforts were made up with AIESEC and it was interesting for me to go forward since the environment and the culture was really comfortable.
Global Youth Dialogue 2.0
Once the EARTH 10.0 was concluded, I got the opportunity to represent a national OC for the first time with the leaders from other entities. The experience was quite exciting and unforgettable since we worked with China and Japanese organizing committees as well. It was organized for offering a cross-cultural experience among the youngsters from Sri Lanka, Japan and China. Here is the blog I wrote about that experience, and it’s a memorable event for all of us.
TrainX 21.22
This was organized by the CXP Panel for term 21.22. This was same as TrainX 20.21 but in a more practical and enhanced way. Basically there were three days for each team, events day, business development day and EP handling day. For EP handling day we were able to join foreign AIESECers and give our fellow AIESECers a better experience.
AMPLIFIER 1.0
AMPLIFIER is my second national OC experience: OCVP for delegates handling. The project aim was to develop the leadership skills of after AL students (Advanced level-also known as higher school) across the country, representing all 25 districts. The program started in August 2021 and ended in December 2021 with group activities, informative sessions, interviews, challenges, and many entertainment sessions. I was there for three months, and the delegates were very passionate, enthusiastic and were actively participating in the events and challenges.
100 Story Tellers
This is another project by AIESEC Sri Lanka that I attended as a student at the 100 Story Tellers Academy. The project was based on Marketing, Content Creating, and AIESEC Branding. No doubt, the knowledge was fascinating and new to me. We were fortunate enough to receive the guidance of specialists in the field with many exciting sessions. There were assignments, group works, intra entity challenges and the best part was the knowledge sharing session. Volunteers from each entity shared their knowledge and experiences on content creating with easy tools that we can use to be more creative and easy to learn and manage.
Thinkwave 3.0
Soo, this is one of the best OC experiences I have ever had in my AIESEC journey. I was assigned for OCVP delegates with exceptional individuals there. This is an all-island ideathon competition for both undergraduates and school students, and this unwraps for the third consecutive time. The first and semifinal rounds were held on online platforms, and the final event was held physically at DHPL Conference Centre, Colombo. By now, the competition is over, and there were a set of awards with cash prizes for the winners and admiration for participants. It was such an amazing, memorable experience.
iGV meetup
I mentioned that my function was iGV. So a number of exchange participants (EPs) applied and came for an exchange in this term to join our projects from different countries after the serious pandemic situation. So with them, we had an iGV meetup at Galle with some fun time.
Some of our iGV projects are completed with a massive impact covering diffrent fields such as tourism, affordable energy, tree plantations and environment cleanups. Other are being executing under different SDGs.
So with all these functions and events, I have been with AIESEC for two terms across life long experiences and friends. I could spend my time in a different way engaging with AIESEC and its culture. The environment is so comfortable and the culture is interesting as far as jives and ice-breakers are there.
If you hope to join with AIESEC, select an entity in your country and university and apply when they are recruiting new members. You don’t need to pay for anything and everything is beneficial for you with the global recognition you receive. Now you can go for exchanges and internship opportunities overseas since the world is getting better after a pandemic.
So I’m grateful for my entity, AIESEC Colombo South for providing me these opportunities. I am inviting you all join with AIESEC and explore yourself and collect experiences.
“AIESEC is bigger than you. So you have space to explore.”
