Draft notes of the Monday Morning Meeting

May 5, 2003
Elspeet, Netherlands
# of Participants: 21 people
Meeting Facilitator: Irmelin Kuethe
Time Keeper: Leafy Feld
Notes by: Olga Godlevskaya

Topics Discussed

• Raising awareness of experiential education, AEE, and standards of experiential education in Europe
• Budgeting of the conference: risk-taking/ scholarships
• Web-site

1 Connection between experiential education movement in Europe and the USA

AEE has been going for 30 years, with nowadays 1,200 - 1,300 people attending the big AEE conferences in the US. More information on the AEE can be found at www.aee.org. 7 years ago the first European conference took place in Belgium. Typical attendance of European EE conferences has been around 30 - 40 people, this year's attendance - 57 participants - is the largest so far.

There has been an ongoing discussion regarding EE Europe becoming an AEE region between people in EE Europe and the USA. A SWOT analysis has been made available through the web-site, and at the meeting materials have been made available.
Points highlighted by meeting participants:
Advantages of becoming an AEE region are not very clear as opposed to advantages of individual and organizational membership in AEE which are very clear and are not questioned. There is a strong emotional connection with AEE as a meetingplace of colleagues and friends. AEE was acknowledged by several people as being the fire from which the spark in Europe comes.
A disadvantages is that the budget would need to be set up according to AEE regulations.

The emerging feeling during the meeting was that moving forward towards being a region of AEE is not fruitful, and even discussing it was taking up valuable time.

Decision

EE Europe does not become an AEE region, unless someone really feels the need to bring up the subject.. (# of people voted for this decision: 16, against - 0, abstained - 5.)

2 Next year's conference: where, how, etc.

The following countries expressed an interest in hosting next year's EE Europe conference:

• Czech Republic
• Spain
• Hungary
• Turkey
• Poland

Decision(s)

• Next year's conference will be held in Czech Republic. (# of votes for each country: Czech Republic - 12, Spain - 1, Hungary - 3, Turkey - 2, Poland - 1.)
• Dates of next year's EE Europe conference: end of April 2004. More exact dates to be decided by the hosts and announced through the web-site in 2-3 weeks.
• Place of next year's conference: to be decided by the hosts and announced through the web-site in 2-3 weeks.
• Topics and ideas for next year's conference brainstormed by all meeting participants will be published on the web-site for further discussion by all list members. [The list of ideas was passed on to the next year's hosts who will send the list to the web-site.]

3 The way we want to be organised/ disorganised

EEEurope web-site
Jac volunteered to be the web-master for the site, together with Roger Greenaway, for the coming 3 years, with reviews conducted every year at the conference. He promised to do it in collaboration with other people.
DecisionJac Rongen and Roger Greenaway are appointed to be web-masters of the EE Europe for the next 3 years. Their work will be reviewed annually to ensure accountability. Shared web-mastership will be done in collaboration with all list members (including decisions about using advertisements of other sites).

Raising awareness of experiential education, AEE, and standards of experiential education in Europe
DecisionThis discussion needs to be moved to the mailing list and the web-site.

This year's budget: What to do with profits if we have them?
Decision(s) Profits must be kept for the future, in the EE Europe account set up in the Netherlands. The profits should be used for the following purposes:

• To cover expenses of the organisers and to compensate their risk-taking
• To maintain the EE Europe web-site
• For scholarships.

The current criteria for awarding scholarships should be evaluated. (We need more people, particularly women, on the scholarship committee.)