Ramadan kareem!

Dear Muslim friends,
On behalf of AIESEC Expansion to Jordan we would like to send you our best wishes for the month of Ramadan. May this month be an uplifting and joyful time for you and your families.

We are happy to be in the MIddle East during this month of tolerance, peace and individual growth.

Best regards,
Oksana, Annika & Monika

8 and more coming soon...

8 Application forms were filled in in front of people, and more people took the forms with clear desire of bringing them back to me by the deadline.

First time I had an AIESEC stand in Irbid. From 10 am until 1 pm I was talking non-stop. One young student lady brought me a drink ,because she thought I would be tired. So thoughtful of her!

Another students were helping me put out the posters on the walls. They absolutely loved our materials! Thanks, Adi from Romania!

The competition started and it goes on. ;)

Recruiting first generation of AIESEC members

Dear all,
it is crazy and hectic over here in Jordan. Outside of AIESEC, with all the cars going to the first day of the school, and inside AIESEC - us running around the campuses & putting up posters, talking to students, meeting the deans of different faculties.

I am in Irbid. Just had meeting with one of the departments in Business Faculty. In 1 hour have another meeting, and at least 2-3 students already want to talk to me about AIESEC. Non stop promotion!

Monika is in Jordan University (Amman) doing the same thing.

At the same time we are working on loads of other jobs which have to be finished beside recruitment.

Crazy, but loving it!

Short notice about our competition:

Team of MOnika& Annika vs. TEam of Oksana & Sherif (our CEEDer from Egypt)

Target: 100 Application Forms by end of next week

Prize: the looser team takes out the winner team for lunch to a restaurant of winner team choice :)

Importnat notice!!!
If both teams manage to get more than 100 Applications at each campus, special bonus present from Oksana ;)!

From Irbid. Oksana

Crazy morning...in Parliament!

Yesterday we received a call from the Chair of our BoA. He told us he arranged a meeting for us with...the first - deputy Speaker of the Parliament!!!

Dr. Nayef H.Al Fayez, one of the most influential people in the country and closely related to King Abdullah II, received us in a parliament building and dedicated his time to listen to our stories about AIESEC and the relevance of AIESEC in Jordan.

At the end he promised his full support, endorsement and access to funding... :) :) :)

..and our first Recruitment starts in 2 days!

ER-- like an Emergency Room?

Hello friends and fans of AIESEC Expansion to Jordan,

This is Annika writing, External Relations and Editor in Chief. As this is my first post, I figured I'd give some perspective on what is going on here in Jordan and our progress.

We are back from IC and running headlong into recruitment, which starts...Sunday! This means preparation. Which sometimes means sitting for hours staring at coral draw trying to figure out if the arabic text is correct and sometimes involves trips to the printer that take half a day because you must drink coffee, have lunch, run some errands and finally get to the work.

But all in the name of new members, right?

Sitting on campus waiting to meet with the president we watched as all the students walked by, many of them in their first year, all looking so fresh and ready to learn. We wondered, which of these students will be our new members?

We are more than a little excited to recruit the first generation of AIESEC members in Jordan. And it all starts in 4 days! AHHHHH

AIESEC office in Irbid

From the upcoming Sunday I will be a resident of Irbid, living in one of the student dormitories & setting up our organization over there. Lately I have been meeting some important people here & have discovered a lot about this city & the way it operates.

Irbid is a student city. Best campuses in the country are situated in Irbid. The amount of talented students that you can meet here is just incredible. When university starts the life in the city starts as well. When university people have their holidays, life in the city is dead.

As an economic entity it functions mainly like a typical rural area grown up. Combined from a lot of small villages around it main source of income for people here is small businesses owned by families & struggling to survive. Hussain Economic Area is also adding value to the community, providing mainly low-qualified jobs with little salaries.

Being a ‘big village’, as a lot of people described it for me, most of the students who graduate universities here escape to Amman. Vicious circle: businesses do not work because smart people run away, smart people run away because businesses do not work.

When asked to name biggest issues in the city, Nidal (manager of local Business Incubator) mentioned the following:
Increasing level of English knowledge
Entrepreneurship – educating people that running your own business is good & teaching them actually how to do that
Education – capitalizing on the university ‘face’ that city possesses

Topics that we focus on in Amman are Corporate Social Responsibility & Intercultural understanding…

Totally different topics over here… I feel that I will indeed need to be a full LCP here & Annika will need to spend at least half of her time in Irbid.

This week & the upcoming ones we will focus on getting key players in the community to know & support AIESEC. Once we have them, we will be able to fully contribute to the development of local community in Irbid.

Very excited about the upcoming recruitment & projects we will run!

From Irbid,
Oksana