Hello!

Finally, I'm back home from ACCESS. Only 2 weeks have passed, but it feels as the last time I was with my LC was long time ago:)

This conference was one of the most intensive and challenging experiences I've ever had in AIESEC.

Starting from the country. As you might have already read in my previous posts, AIESEC in Finland was one of the pioneering countries in our network back in 1948. And it's also the most northen country:) (yep, there is an LC, AIESEC Oulu, which is situated northermost in the whole AIESEC world). It was something very unusual for me to see alumni who were in AIESEC , say, 25 years ago :) Yes, we are all very young in Ukraine, young as people, young as country. The country is also different in AIESEC culture. Their LCs are much smaller than ours, but comparing to country's size - it's not that little (the whole population of Finland is about the population of Kiev, without suburbs:)) And it is also different from us in members. Since there are lots of other student organisations and the general atmosphere in the country is not selective, they do not select members and allow everyone who wishes to work in AIESEC. Socialising effect is very important here and most of the interns, SNs and re-integrates are actively involve into AIESEC because of those social bonds it creates. And many other dfferences, ... Guess, it would take me lots of time to write everything and still, I don't know them enough:)

Conferences here are also different from what we are accustomed to in Ukraine. Just magine, OCs cook for delegates here (because of extremely high salaries for personnel), but they only rent venue, provide logistics and food. All the rest is done by facis starting from set-ups, moving-ins, to greeting externals, to delivering sessions. And there is a very lovely tradition: all LCs have their mascots whom they bring on all conferences and shout and perform roll-calls with them. And, there is another wonderful tradition to steal mascots and spread rumours about them around Finland:) And... omitting all detective series, I'll just want to congratulate AIESEC in Kiev with a new lovely mascot. You'll see him on LCM:)

ACCESS is an annual conference for all members of AIESEC in Finland (newbies, oldies, EBs, SNs, interns, re-integrates). There was a very diverse selection of delegates from, virtually, all parts of the world, the same as the faci team :)

Agenda was aimed to develop the 4 change agent's charactristics. It started with a meeting with alumni on the first day - our real life change agents, and moved on to sessions by externals (guess what, there were 19 externals running 5 parallel sessions during one day:)) and ending with AIESEC University on the last day which was devoted to AIESEC Subsystems and Finnishe National Focus Areas.

Well, hat was a short description of the conference and my experience. It challenged my worldview and my AIESEC approach. It was wonderful. It was unforgettable. I wish you'll have something like this or even better one day:)

Cheers!