AIESEC Ain Shams University’s Cooperation Award for CAWU

Language: 
English
Sent On: 
Thu, 2019-02-14
Year: 
2019
Newsletter Number: 
3

   

AIESEC Ain Shams University contacted the Center for Arab-West Understanding (CAWU) in March 2018 with a request to host student interns through AIESEC. Since this date CAWU hosted 21 AIESEC interns who have all contributed to database building for mutual intercultural understanding as well as advancing social media awareness for our work. The AIESEC interns have also contributed to the diversity of our interns.

 

We received many interns from Asia and Latin America where previously our student interns primarily came from Egypt, Europe, North America and South Korea. AIESEC provides excellent services for their interns. They not only help them in finding internships, but also help the students with accommodation and organize visits to parts of Egypt that are worth seeing for first time visitors to Egypt.

 

Please find hereby the experiences of Brazilian AIESEC intern Bruno Raphael Dos Santos Balbi Rodrigues who has worked with CAWU during his time in Egypt. Pedro Henrique Tinoco from Brazil arrived in January for a six week period.

 

        

On February 8, AIESEC Ain Shams University awarded CAWU with a cooperation award for the 20 students we were able to host in 2018. They had called their program to reach the first place in student exchanges worldwide 'Horus,' after the Egyptian Pharaonic god Horus who was flying above anyone else. Through this AIESEC Ain Shams University wanted to show that their chapter would fly above all other chapters of AIESEC worldwide and thus the cooperation award is depicted as Horus.

 

AIESEC was established after the Second World War to heal divisions between nations through youth exchanges. This is still a very noble goal that CAWU fully supports, as the world still continues to face significant prejudices against peoples of other cultures. This includes Islamophobia and fear for the Arab world, including Egypt. This is not to say that all is perfect in Egypt and other Arab countries. Countries struggling with civil war, Libya, Syria, Yemen and much of Iraq cannot be visited but visits to Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon, and the Gulf States are certainly possible.

 

AIESEC is the world’s largest youth-run non-governmental not-for-profit organization. They have over 70,000 active student members over 1 million alumni. They are represented in over 2,400 universities in 127 countries, including Egypt. They are working with over 5,000 partner organizations and CAWU is pleased to be one of them. AIESEC has a consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), affiliated with the UN DPI, member of ICMYO, and is recognized by UNESCO. 

 

AIESEC’s described its vision as:

“Peace and fulfilment of humankind's potential. To achieve this we seek to engage and    

empower every young person. AIESEC is a global platform for young people to explore and develop their leadership potential. We are a non-political, independent, not-for-profit organisation run by students and recent graduates of institutions of higher education. Its members are interested in world issues, leadership and management. AIESEC does not discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion or national/social origin.”

 

Of course, this is very much in line with the vision of CAWU.

AIESEC Ain Shams University indeed succeeded in becoming the number one AIESEC chapter in the world.  They succeeded by facilitating more student exchanges than any other AIESEC chapter worldwide. This was celebrated on February 8 in Cairo. CAWU is very pleased that we could contribute to this by hosting 20 AIESEC student interns in 2018!

 

Congratulations AIESEC Ain Shams University for your great achievement!! We certainly wish to continue our cooperation with AIESEC!!

 

Cairo, February 14, 2019

Cornelis Hulsman,

Leading founder of the Center for Arab-West Understanding