I went to the AIESEC France office yesterday after class. It's located in the 19th arrondissement, so in the Northeastern section of Paris. I walked up to the door, which was covered with @ posters, and saw the "follow your passions" slogan on one of the posters (in French of course), which totally made my day. I spent a couple hours there talking to one of the VPs, Rita, who is super sweet and also super helpful. It was extremely fascinating to hear how @ France functions in comparison to Madison and @ US, and to really see how strategy really has to be catered to each environment.
How many times was it drilled into my head that when talking about AIESEC for marketing and recruitment, or talking about why AIESEC is so much better of an exchange opportunity, our niche comes into play with the internships instead of studying at a school, with the integration, with the cost effectiveness? If I were to talk about these things in a class rap in France, that would be like saying, please do more of what you already have to do to graduate, through one of the many institutions that does the same thing as all the rest. Then, how should we market AIESEC in a way that is appealing not only for students to join and go abroad, but for businesses choosing to hire interns through AIESEC?
LCs in France started at the private universities, like the business schools, etc. who are required to do a couple internships just to graduate...when @ is asking you to do similar skills during your busy school year, and to be active members, it is much more difficult to create strong functioning LCs. Therefore it was explained to me that the LCs here are either weak or new. An example of a strong new LC was an LC of 10 people, led by an inspirational 18 year old who did an amazing job recruiting and creating energy around the LC. At the same time however, new LCs don't have strong foundations so this particular LC isn't exactly functional yet in the way that it should be as part of @. Thinking back to Madison's preparation for the turnover and transition between last semester and this one, and then trying to imagine what it must be like here, I'm kind of at a loss thinking about the best strategy for LC development. I'm so used to there being teams, with multiple people on teams.
On the other hand, in my opinion they have a lot of success bringing trainees in, and although I haven't participated in anything yet, it sounds like they have a network set up and events etc for trainees. Also, since the MC is super involved in running the LCs, for better or for worse, there's a lot of potential there for LC collaboration....the way I understood it, sometimes LCs meet all together because the MC brings them together for announcements or possibly training etc. before splitting them up for separate work. All the LCs in Paris could easily get together once a month...lots of possibility there. Imagine the energy, training, networking, development opportunities ROKS-style continuing throughout the year.
More to think about later.
I'm going to try to make it to some conferences while I'm here. :)
