Passionate About My AIESEC Experience

Every day, AIESEC is enabling young people to discover and develop their potential in order to have a positive impact on society. When you first join AIESEC, this sentence makes you go rolling on the floor laughing out loud. When you are being told what the vision of AIESEC is (Peace and fulfillment of humankinds potential), you just can't help yourself crapping in your pants. The more time you spend actively involved in AIESEC, the more understanding you build for the whole phylosophy behind it. But you can never truly understand it until you attend the AIESEC's International Congress, when this words start to make very literal sense, because you actually experience them first hand.

Is there any other organization that brings together so many diverse people from more than 100 countries of the world, that are united by the common vision? Is there any other organization, where you are able to build a network of friends with so many different nationalities around the world? Which organization except for AIESEC brings together so many people from countries with conflicting ideologies and makes them share their views and resolve the misconceptions that they have about each other? In AIESEC it doesnt matter if you are indian or pakistani, israeli or palestinian, muslim or jew, gay or straight, liberal or conservative - you are always going to be accepted the way you are. AIESEC makes all these people peacefully work together, party together, dance together, share the world views,...

As it is written in our global compedium, AIESEC does not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, gender, sexual orientation, creed, religion, national, ethnic or social origin. And here on IC, you can really feel that people actually live this statement. On AIESEC conferences i have experienced not only young people from more than 100 different nationalities, but also very diverse political views. On one hand i have experienced very liberal statements, such as for example people openly talking about being gay and not being discriminated for saying this by any representative of any country. On the other hand i have experienced very conservative statements like "I am sorry, i cannot shake your hand because i am not allowed to touch men". One really has to believe in 'living diversity' value to be able to accept this. Yet we are all united by not only the common vision and values, but also by the formula on how to achieve it.

The girl who refused to shake my hand for the religious reasons was not even from a muslim country, but she herself did identify herself as a muslim. In general, you cannot believe about how we are all the same people. Muslims from the muslim countries are actually much more open. I have experienced middle eastern delegates to be much more liberal than i could have ever thought. They do everything that 'western' people do on the parties. They have no problem dressing up into the opposite sex, they drink alcohol and they do all other things that sometimes tend to happen on parties.

What is AIESEC actually? A leadership development organization? Educational foundation? Management school? A peace movement? Exchange organization? HRM service for global companies? Well, all of the above. AIESEC offers so many life changing opportunities, that so many people never get. And through all of the above, AIESEC manipulates its members into having a global mindset, leadership skills, characteristics and great job opportunities on global level. Through the people that AIESEC develops, we do have a positive impact on society. On International Congress it is amazing to hear our members, alumni members, and even externals, talking about how AIESEC changed their lives, and to se what positions they have had as a direct result of being AIESEC members. Unfortunately we have a long way to go in Slovenia to position AIESEC in the way it is positioned with the global companies around the world.

AIESEC is often accused of being an organization that manipulates with people, mostly by the members themselves, who sometimes acknowledge this. Well, if the goal of this manipulation is positive, then i have no problem calling it a manipulation. Every advertisment you look at, every organization you go to, there always is a lot of manipulation involved. Any kind of motivation is a manipulation. Many companies have to rely on manipulation in order to make their employees enjoy working in a company and thus achieve better results. If you don't like manipulation, you don't like motivation. If you dont like motivation, therefore you will never accept being motivated to work in a company. It just seems to me that it is better to be manipulated to enjoy your work than to suffer all your like working. If the result of manipulation is 25.ooo members believing in 'peace and fulfillment of humankind's potential' and the common and innocent way to achieve it, then long live the manipulation. On the other hand, i am manipulating people around me as well :)

Religion organizations require lifelong membership and discourage members from leaving the organization. But in AIESEC, no matter how addicted you get to the organization, you have to leave it sooner or later, because we are a global student organization. But you take with you all that you have learned, a global mindset and all the priceless experiences and contacts you have gained.

While religious organizations tend to teach their members to subject to a higher being and follow him, AIESEC's main focus is teaching on developing leadership. AIESEC is teaching its the members on how to make the other people follow you, therefore taking your life into your own hands. We have no higher being. Leadership is commonly misunderstood. It is very neccessary to emphasize that by leadership leadership skills we mean the set of personal characteristics that one must have in order to responsibly lead a group of people, rather than actual leading. In AIESEC we define these characteristics as social responsibility, cultural sensitivity, entrepreneurial spirit and active learnership. All of this characteristics are comprised of 4 competencies. But leadership also encompasses many skills.

Our global partners do believe in leadership development capabilities of AIESEC. On this congress there are many high profile representatives of our global partner organizations, such as DHL, ABN AMRO, Cadburry Schweppes, Microsoft,... They seem to be just as passionate about AIESEC as our members are. They are amazed by our internal organizational culture. We often do rollcalls together. Yesterday the representatives of Cadburry Schweppes and ABN Amro even introduced a new ''AIESEC Dance'' that they have created. They are usually delivering sessions for us, and we can as well talk to them a lot. They never forget to emphasize how important it is for their employees to have the unique characteristics that AIESECers have, such as global mindset, cultural sensitivity, entrepreneurial spirit, social responsiblity and so on. Yesterday i spoke to one of the leading HR representatives of ABN Amro about it, and he said that education is only important for lawyers, but in business and economics you don't need to have any kind of formal education as long as you have the right attitude. It is quite interesting to hear them talking about what kind of people they employ, because in Slovenia companies don't seem to share the same view. Well, Slovenia seems to be quite a conservative business environment. And what is the most interesting about those global companies is, that they employ many AIESEC members. They even have people employed whose only job in the company is to recruit AIESEC members to high profile positions in their companies.

But of course it is not enough just to take one thing that AIESEC offers you and go claiming you are the future leader. The global companies look for people who have lived diverse and long AIESEC experiences the way they are supposed to, therefore went to take responsibilities, leadership roles, went on internships, and so on...

Ah, university educational system can just go to hell. It forces you to study and doesnt make you enjoy learning. But here in AIESEC you just soak up all the knowledge every day and enjoy. You just feel your braing growing every day. On university you study to get a sheet of paper, but in AIESEC, i you learn because i enjoy learning. Here, knowledge really becomes a value. I wish university system can achieve the same thing one day. I think in AIESEC i picked up much more knowledge than i did on university, on the same subjects that my university was supposed to cover, topics like management, business, entrepreneurship and leadership. And if an added value of AIESECs education is self awarenes, cross-cultural understanding, improvement of foreign language speaking, then i really dont know why not going further with my AIESEC Experience! Maybe i will not get a sheet of paper in AIESEC when i finish it, but i will certainly feel the satisfaction with my life experience and knowledge i got in AIESEC.

Uros,

AIESEC Slovenia MC