COMEM 2021
On the 27th and 28th of November, we had the pleasure to host our first hybrid event, which is nothing less than our Council of Members.
22 official delegates from our Membership joined the event in person in Brussels, while other 15 delegates joined the event online. Although challenging, the experience was more than positive. The level of discussions and meaningful conversations that took place during the event are not comparable to the ones happening in a 100% online environment.
But, what happened during COMEM?
- Two organisations joined the OBESSU family as Candidate Organisations. Meet Mouvement National Lycéen (MNL) form France and the Secondary Students’ Union of Northern Ireland (SSUNI)
- We have approved a new Implementation Plan for 2022 and the Code of Conduct of the organisation, which sets the core values of OBESSU
- We have organised a student assembly on students' participation in decision-making using the Generation Deliberation methodology. Hey, check out our Instagram to see more!
- We discussed important topics, such as learning for the XXI century, the European Year of Youth, VET, Early school leaving, mobilisation of students, mental health and more.
The best part of it though, was coming together, meeting each other and sharing some nice memories.
We think COMEM went great, but who knows better than our participants? We asked Sînziana from CNE and Uliana from SAKKI to tell us more about their COMEM experience
Q: Tell us something new that you learned during COMEM.
Sînziana Georgescu - CNE: ‘’To interact with OBESSU was something new to me and also to use my English to debate about the educational system. The most special thing was that I realized, during COMEM, what inclusiveness means for real. It was like a welcome gift in Belgium for me to have people around me who aren't looking weird to you or judging you in any way. And this is the thing I just keep saying since I came back home, that COMEM and OBESSU team is the most inclusive group of people I have ever met.
It was a real pleasure to meet all this great active citizens, this amazing students, to listen stories about educational advocacy and to work two days together to improve the quality of all what school means: curriculum, opportunities for students to develop themselves, mental health and what we can do to be part of the politicians decisions in the field of education. During COMEM it was amazing to learn how schools work in other EU countries.
One of my main domains of activity in CNE is mental health and inclusiveness. Until COMEM I thought the educational problems from Romania are unique, but it was really helpful to see how similar they are with those in other EU states and to exchange good practices between us.’’
Q: What is your COMEM highlight ?
Uliana Musakina - SAKKI: ''Last weekend OBESSU finally hosted their first live event after two years of having to deal with online meetings, like the rest of the world, because of the pandemic.
The event happened to be COMEM - Council of members assembly.
In my opinion, you couldn't pick a better event to announce the beginning of coming back to normal face-to-face life. Of course, there is a long journey ahead, but the start has been set.
One of many important topics of COMEM was returning to live education and overcoming the corona-crisis. 20 representatives of different European youth organizations had the opportunity to freely discuss all the obstacles they faced as advocates and as students and suggest possible solutions. Collaborative work allowed COMEM as a whole to understand better, what actions should be taken to help overcome the obstacles that may occur after returning to live learning
And also to ease the school life for teachers and tutors - smooth collective work is the main criteria for reducing possible difficulties in education during the pandemic.
Additionally, in my opinion, the brightest OBESSU COMEM highlight was the unity of the participants. All organisation representatives were more than willing to share their knowledge and their organisation's experiences, thoughts and ideas but more importantly, they were willing to listen to others. Everybody took the learning opportunity they were kindly offered.
Of course, OBESSU has many years of experience of working with young people and the main point is to act as a united front, however when a group of individuals can work together that well, it's truly priceless.''