Thanks for writing this up! Agree that we should coordinate more on regional level.
City/national groups are often run by adult, professional people, who don’t know enough about what it means to run a uni group.
I’m curious, why do you think so?
Many city / national level group organisers started with organising uni groups, and even those who only learned about EA after university have often done some other form of student engagement as well like running other student groups, so I’d guess that the majority of city / national level group organisers do have experience with this. Even those who do not would be happy to learn more about what it’s like to run student groups.
I think there are benefits of having one central national-level group rather than several organisations, and if a specific national group lacks capacity or competence to support uni groups, then I would first try to build up capacity there (e.g. hire someone to do uni group support specifically) rather than founding a new organisation with all the overhead that comes with it.
Lastly, this system seems to work well in countries with well-established national-level groups like EA Norway.
I should’ve put more thought into this section. I now realize I was mainly basing my claim on my experience with Czech EA, where almost no one has experience with university groups, and the fact that there are basically no national groups in the US/UK regions (only city groups).
National groups can definitely play the role of regional groups in many places extremely well, I just don’t think it’s a requirement to have one to coordinate as uni groups on the regional level.
Thanks for writing this up! Agree that we should coordinate more on regional level.
I’m curious, why do you think so?
Many city / national level group organisers started with organising uni groups, and even those who only learned about EA after university have often done some other form of student engagement as well like running other student groups, so I’d guess that the majority of city / national level group organisers do have experience with this. Even those who do not would be happy to learn more about what it’s like to run student groups.
I think there are benefits of having one central national-level group rather than several organisations, and if a specific national group lacks capacity or competence to support uni groups, then I would first try to build up capacity there (e.g. hire someone to do uni group support specifically) rather than founding a new organisation with all the overhead that comes with it.
Lastly, this system seems to work well in countries with well-established national-level groups like EA Norway.
I should’ve put more thought into this section. I now realize I was mainly basing my claim on my experience with Czech EA, where almost no one has experience with university groups, and the fact that there are basically no national groups in the US/UK regions (only city groups).
National groups can definitely play the role of regional groups in many places extremely well, I just don’t think it’s a requirement to have one to coordinate as uni groups on the regional level.