“Being a board member is one of the best experiences of my life so far!”

Hey everybody around Europe. In this very moment I am sitting in an airport hall in Munich waiting for my connection flight back home to Austria. You might wonder where I’m coming from?
Well, the last 4 days I have been in Helsinki at the Rural Youth Europe office. While I have to wait a little to move on I am still back at the office with my thoughts, because it was such a busy time over there. Together with some board members and our Secretary General Pia we worked on final preparations for the Rally and held job interviews for the vacancies at RYEurope. Hosting the interviews and interviewing the candidates was a pretty responsible task, but more than great experience.
Due to the fact that a lot of work is going on and time seems to fly I really didn’t realise that it’s been a year now, since I was elected to the RYEurope board and I honestly have to point out that this has definitely been one of the best experiences in my life. It’s kind of hard to bring to paper what my thoughts and feelings are right now, but I will give it a try.
The work is intense and requires a lot of time and responsibility, but I personally like it a lot for several reasons. I will not mention every one of them, because this would break the mould, but there are some of them I would like to share with you.
First of all it is the spirit and feeling of how multicultural aspects, tolerance, human rights and of course rural challenges come alive and get transformed into events and activities. At every board meeting new ideas come along for development of the organisation and all of its activities to continue.
Second, it’s definitely the people from all around Europe but especially the ones from the board. Even if we meet just a couple of times a year for meetings and at our events great friendships have arisen and we share great moments together. I could have never imagined that such a great team can be formed within such a short time, with such few physical meetings. It’s somehow a miracle that through European citizenship I have made some many friends for a lifetime.
Thirdly it’s our motto: ‘breaking boundaries, building bridges’ – connecting people from all over Europe and of course our organisational structure. BY youth FOR youth. It’s the passion young adults have to step forward, take responsibility and create something new. It’s the energy to originate and develop, to debate and negotiate about rural issues and identities, human rights, tolerance and education. There are the opportunities to learn and broaden every participant’s horizons through going abroad and exploring together. And last but not least it’s the sharing and solving of common challenges we face all around Europe. I have the strong feeling that together we have a loud voice and together we can achieve a lot more.
Alright guys… I have to catch my flight now back home. I hope to see you soon at one of our events soon.
Up until then all the best
Sebastian