One of the best parts of this conference are...

... the people, all the delegates from ~ 100 countries (highest number of delegates in an IC so far). During the talks with the people I have discovered that I’m very proud to be a member of AIESEC in Estonia. We are known as the country where Deniss comes from (and Mairi etc). :P But it’s not a bad thing as it means that he has done a lot of lobby work to promote us, we are continuing his work We are small but actually the work we have done and will do is really impressive. We are pioneering in many things like alumni fund, using “I’m an aieseccer campaign” for recruitment, having Learning Cycle “Klapid eest!” etc.

An amazing session took part yesterday – we went back to the time when the organization was founded. It was just so unbelievable to hear the stories of PAIs (President of AIESEC International) of previous times. About how it was to be an African in a world of racism and being a part of AIESEC and trying to attend the conferences. How it was to take AIESEC to Latin-America and build it up. How hard and challenging times the organization has had because of the political issues like South Africa, Taiwan, Russia etc. What it was like to start AIESEC behind the iron curtain. How it was to do matching via post. Having pink and green papers to mark interns and TNs. I actually took our organization for granted and I haven’t really thought about how it all started and what it might have felt like.

Take a look at the Pärnu blog (aiesecparnu.blogspot.com) and don’t forget to log on to IC Live to see what we are up to in this hot city of Istanbul where 650 young leaders have gathered to become even better and make an impact once they return to their AIESEC countries and territories.

Hugs and sun from Istanbul,

Kadi