To me, travel means adventure; so I ignored the raised eyebrows and headed straight or the unknown- into the lush green lap of Transylvania, Romania. I don’t think I could have asked for a better AIESEC experience.

Romania is a land struggling to get back on its feet, both financially and politically. Yet there is always place for beauty- you’ll see her revealing her pretty face through colorful cottages, dancing crimson tulips on window sills or the adorable cobble-stoned piatas. Having spent most of my time there in Cluj Napoca, more…

Follow your passion

Right after the intensive leadership experience as a conference manager in January 2010, I decided to go for exchange on the same issue- Corporate Social Responsibility- which completed the whole issue-based experience. I joined the Sustainability Education Program which was a national project in Romania as a developmental traineeship to spread my impact internationally. Following your own passion could help you identify what do you want to achieve in an international internship experience, at the same time, fulfill your internal desire.

Spread your impact directly and indirectly

In Romania, I have directly spread my impact in the local community by conducting workshops on sustainability to the university students in Cluj-Napoca. It was not only to enrich their knowledge and awareness to the issue, but also empowering them as change agents to contribute back to the society. Besides, I have shared my skills and knowledge which I had developed through previous leadership experience to other trainees in the same project, so that more people can be influenced. Apart from learning from other people, I could utilize my leadership experience to make a bigger impact both directly and indirectly.

Cultural experience more…

Hello, my name is Gaurav Sathe, a trainee from Mumbai, India, on an internship in AIESEC in Cluj-Napoca in May-June 2010. Here are some important things I feel you should know as a new trainee in Romania:

1. It is always good to learn one to ten in Romanian as it will help you out from time to time. Learn simple words such as good night (noapte buna), good (bine), thank you (merci), yes (da), apa (water), etc. since it will help you build relations with people such as the watchman, canteen-guy and other such persons who will be happy to help you since you are making an effort to learn a bit of their language.
2. Don’t be late. Things here work on time and Romanian people are too nice to tell you that you were late but frankly I feel it is considered very disrespectful in their culture to be late.
3. Be involved with the LC as far as possible. Especially if you are an AIESECer back home, it is really nice to see how AIESEC here is different from AIESEC at home.
4. Use your trainee buddies. As I understand it, these guys signed up to help you out with whatever you need. Do not feel that you are exploiting them; I feel that every time they are successful with helping you out with something, it gives them great joy in doing so, and in not asking them for anything you are simply not allowing them to reach their goal, i.e., making your experience special.
5. 

   Alcohol is cheap, I know. Especially to my Indian friends, keep the level of drinking at moderate. Don’t get too excited and lose control, it has several consequences. I learn this the hard way.

6. Culture shock may happen to you and you may not realize it, but these are the symptoms: you will try as far as possible to stay alone or at home, not go out and talk to people. You will miss home and think of when you will go back. But here is how you can beat it-call your trainee buddy and ask them to take you around the city. This can help as you will see things that are not like home, and will remind you how lucky you are to be here. more…

„Hy, my name is Monica Abrudan, I’m 24 and I’m a programmer. In the spring of 2009 I decided to give my career a little bit of colour by involving in social development projects.
I wanted to do volunteering at the British Red Cross, ONU or UNICEF, but I was refused because of my lack of working experience in the social domain.

Fortunately, AIESEC offered me a chance to participate at social development projects through a Development Internship of 2 months in Egypt. I worked at an NGO, who’s purpose was the development of the cities/villages around Alexandria. One of my main responsibilities were participating at the organizing of this social project.

Besides my professional experience, I gained much more culturally speaking. Egypt was the first country I visited outside Europe. I found a new culture with different traditions, religion, food, family relations, clima and… traffic.
Soon after I returned from this internship I went in another one again through AIESEC and lived another grate experience.

AIESEC offered me the opportunity to try a totally different career in my professional development and I loved it”

Monica Abrudan
AIESEC Cluj-Napoca

My name is Roxi Opriş and I’m in love with doing Exchange… This is more than a simple fact I can relate to AIESEC, it comes down to being a behavior I was looking so much to develop throughout my entire life… doing something that engages you completely emotionally to a level that you can’t even talk about it, but simply transmit it and leave a mark in other people’s lives. This is Exchange to me.

In AIESEC Cluj-Napoca I found out for the 2 years and half spent there that passion has no limits and you can really find a wide range of opportunities to explore it to the full. Mine was still Exchange, but this time I took it to an upper level- in the spring of 2009 I applied and got selected in the National Committee of AIESEC Norway and what I didn’t know at that point was that Roxi was about to start the experience of a life time.

Being in an international MC and coordinating the Exchange area reached new points for me…

I was finally  about to discover what Exchange- the experience that I constantly was talking about in AIESEC- really meant to me. Because, nevertheless, being on a total unfamiliar ground, having completely different expectations and perspectives about how to live life every day, knowing just a couple of people who were dragging me to adjust in an environment that felt so natural to them all the time, not knowing the language and how to get to things in the most simple way as possible eventually pulled the trigger and more…

It’s almost 4 years since I’m in AIESEC, having a variety of learning experiences, like: coordinating sales teams, project teams, the whole local committee and also working at national level. Although the most impactful experiences that I had so far, were the ones abroad. So far I had the chance to work-visit-have fun in Turkey ( 3 times ), Egypt, Hungary, Poland, Portugal and UK.

Last time in Turkey, Istanbul (15^th-21^st of March, 2010), I proudly represented Romania again at an international conference about leadership and management, called EuroXpro. More than 40 countries were present from Central Eastern Europe and West Europe – North America. Discussing topics like global impact, global youth opinion leaders, diversifying the international internship opportunities, all during 6 days. more…

For three months (15.09.2009 – 15.12.2009 )  I worked on the “Meeting Diversity” project in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, organizing a series of workshops and trainings for students from three different high schools. The workshops were concentrated on topics like public speaking skills, time management, study and speed reading or conflict resolution techniques. We also had some debates starting from movies approaching issues like cultural diversity or human rights; and two events, one through which the students had the chance to hear and discuss the experiences of young people that studied abroad through the Erasmus Program; the other one was a Simulation of the Council of the European Union where the 27 participants were given the task to discuss and negotiate on the progress Turkey has made so far in order to become a full-right member of the EU. All these activities were meant to offer the students the possibility to practice their English, learn something new and interesting and encourage them to explore all opportunities for education and international competitions. more…