International Student Week in Belgrade, ISWiB 2009

"Challenge of Changes"

Participants will be chosen according to their on-line application that can be found on the official web site of the festival - www.iswib.org. They are offered to join one of 10 workshops: Art and Culture, Environmental Protection, Economics, Health, Human Rights, Media, Society, Youth Activism, Photography and Filmmaking. Deadline for applying is closing - April 30


By MARKO ANDREJIĆ
from Belgrade, SERBIA


The third International Student Week in Belgrade, ISWiB 2009 will be held from August 9 to 16, in the capital of Serbia. Heading motto of this year's meeting is "Challenge of Changes" and about 200 students and young people from all around Europe, as well as Serbia, will gather to take part in interactive workshops and discussions and hear some interesting lectures on present-day topics. Also they will have a chance to spend a whole week in Belgrade, to meet its citizens, Serbian culture, customs, tradition as well as its modern way of living and thinking.

Participants will be chosen according to their on-line application that can be found on the official web site of the festival - www.iswib.org. Here, they need to make statements about their active role in civil society, about their motivation to participate at ISWiB, as well as about their expectations and favourite group/workshop. They are offered to join 10 workshops: Art and Culture, Environmental Protection, Economics, Health, Human Rights, Media, Society, Youth Activism, Photography and Filmmaking. Workshop leaders will be postgraduate students, experienced trainers, international experts and university professors. Finally, applicants will be asked to formulate a short essay concerning a topic covered by ISWiB 2009. Deadline for applying is April 30.

International Student Week in Belgrade 2009 will be held for the third time, following the first two that took place in 2006 and 2007. The project is made by students and youth organization "World Youth Wave" from Belgrade, Serbia. ISWiB 2009 partners are also students and youth organizations from Serbia - Students Cultural Center Belgrade, Green Youth Serbia and Anti Trafficking Center and abroad - Youth Informative Agency Bosnia and Herzegovina, Zveza študentskih klubov Slovenije (Slovenia), Liga studentilor din Facultatea de Automatica si Calculatoare Timisoara (Romania), and more... This year the whole project will be under the auspices of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe Mr Terry Davis.

There are many interesting topics to be discussed through the workshops. Environmental Protection is aiming to tell to participants about importance of active participation for keeping and improving environment in the conditions of big city. Economics group will try to explain the basic concepts of macroeconomics in the world today, especially in the context of actual global financial crisis that is considered one of the worst crisis since 1930s. Art & Culture will be focused on culture management, production and organization through the experience of transitional Balkan society, with the aim to clearly define the problems that some culture fields are facing with and the way for overcoming.

In Society workshop participants will try to make together theoretical analysis of nationalism and identity and to concentrate on debates running actual in whole Europe. They will look inside some case studies that explain similarities and differences in approaches (North Ireland, Scandinavia, Russia, Balkan...). New media technologies bring to us intensive and inevitable changes - digital TV, Internet, mobile phones, iPod and many others, become a part of every-day-life and substantially change the way we understand media. Participants in Media workshop will also discuss about new media influence on economical and social, as well as political side of media industry.

Since March 2006, Belgrade's festival is a member of SOrCE (Students Organizing Conventions Everywhere) - an international network of student festivals, that have been organized since the nineties across Europe, and even in Tanzania, Africa. The aim is to create a base for co-operation, to help each other with the organization of conferences and to learn from each other. SOrCE is everywhere where its members are, which means: Ilmenau and Greifswald (Germany), Pecz (Hungary), Eindhoven (The Netherlands), Trondheim (Norway), Maribor (Slovenia), Cracow (Poland), Sumi (Ukraine).


(Published: 10.04.2009.)