EFPSA WEEK 2021

These are excerpts from the EFPSA Week held in October 2021. It is an event aimed at sharing the internal structure of EFPSA and its offices. This can be particularly useful if you want to familiarize yourself with the workings of EFPSA and if you wish to become part of its Working Community. For further information, curiosities, doubts or clarifications, do not hesitate to contact us at the following address: italy@efpsa.org

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DAY 1- Events & Marketing Office

Additional point:
– Diversity within the team is respected, but at the same time the idea of having a ‘common base’ brings the various members together, as they share a common aim.

Gaia De Sanctis & Isabella Baldonieri

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DAY 2- Research program

This video is about introducing the Research Programme, presented by Tea, EFPSA’s research coordinator.

The Research Programme’s purpose is to work for a full year together with students, PhDs, postdoctoral researchers, and established academics. EFPSA’s Research Team is in charge of supervising and making sure that everything goes according to plan.

The main characteristics of the Team are the following three: inspiring, creative and secure. The team members are always pushing and motivating each other to be better and more creative, as seen on the social media page. But before being co-workers, members are friends. This team is a secure place where every person can feel respected and understood.

The main tasks of the Coordinator of the Research Team are the following:
– Coordinating and supervising the team’s activities
– Overseeing and actively participating in the selection of participants, topics, and themes within the RP framework
– Facilitating the communication within the RP Team and associated entities

Also, there is the Research Responsible, who is in charge of ensuring effective and efficient communication between the participants of the research program, tracking the progress of the Research Teams, and facilitating the research program’s participant selection. This person is the key for the team since it is the main person that has to make sure that everything is going well and on track. And lastly, there is the Team Member, who is the person mainly in charge of promoting the program on social media (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter); also, this person is the one that has to facilitate the organization of the mid-program, which is a meeting where the participants get to see each other and work together for a few days.

Vittoria Mirabelli

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DAY 3 – External Relations & Partnership office

Dora, as partnership coordinator, presents the Partnership Office, its members, what they do, what their goals are, etc. 

The partnership office consists of three members: 
1. Finance Officer
2. Partnership Coordinator 
3. Partnership Team Members

The goal is to collaborate with external partners and find sponsors (collecting organizations, reaching out to them, acquiring new partners etc.). 

The team can also be described in three different words: 
1. Together (team and not individual workers)
2. Respectful (same amount of respect to every organization, no matter how big or old the organization is)
3. Realistic (realistic in setting goals and expectations in what they can offer to partners and to other organizations)

The Main Tasks of Partnership Office are:

• Acquiring new beneficial partners for EFPSA
• Maintaining existing partnerships 
• Creating and maintaining a partnerships’ database
• Creating an annual and long-term strategy for partnerships 
• Helping and supporting other teams

Apart from those general tasks, each member has some tasks specific to their roles. 

The main tasks of the Finance Officer are:

• Overseeing the work of Partnership Office; it is to say, that the Finance Office is in charge of leading the team, discussing ideas, advising the team and making sure that the team does its tasks according to their action plans.
• Meeting regularly with Partnership Coordinator.
• Approving partnerships, before the team initiates any contact with the new potential partner. In fact, the Finance Officer should verify if the new potential partner is in accordance with EFPSA’s vision, mission and values.
• Updating the Board of the team’s work. Since the Finance Officer is part of the board, its communication is stronger than that with the rest of the team; therefore, it works as a bridge between the office and the board.

The Main Tasks of Partnership Coordinator are:

• Coordinating the work of Partnership Office: Partnership Coordinator makes sure that everything is going as it was planned and makes sure that the atmosphere is pleasant comfortable for everyone.
• Ensuring that partnerships are in accordance with EFPSA’s values: making sure that no partner harms the association’s image.
• Drafting the partnership contracts: this comes at the end of partnership negotiations. It basically concerns how the team sets a deal or makes a contract. 
• Updating the Finance Officer of the team’s work.

The Main Tasks of Partnership Team Members are:

• Researching potential partners: EFPSA looks for partners through LinkedIn, Facebook and other social media. They also check if the potential partners have already some partnership offers.
• Making sure both sides fulfill their obligations: This means that team members are in constant contact with partners, and they also make sure that partners respect their obligations and expectations.
• Updating partnership brochure and sponsorship package: those are the documents that EFPSA sends to the potential partners. They consist of little summaries of EFPSA events, promotional opportunities, etc. 

What the team has accomplished so far … The team made two new partnerships: the first one is with The Mind Foundation and the second one is with Iris.ai. The latter one is a very interesting partnership as it regards the research summer school, so it was a temporary partnership; on the other hand, the one with Mind Foundation was a partnership with EFPSA in general. EFPSA also renewed its partnership with international associations of applied psychology (IAAP) and with the Creative Pause.  Moreover, EFPSA has also something new: it made a QR code for the partnership Idea Box, a google form in which any member of EFPSA or an external member can fill in a google form and suggest a potential partner that EFPSA could contact later. The last point that the team accomplished is the collaboration with other teams (marketing office, training office, study and travel abroad, research program, research summer school etc.). 

 …and what is coming up … Partnership database, planning on delivering a Partnership 101 Workshop – which would be a workshop  only for EFPSA working community in which the team will explain how to acquire new partners, initiate contact, what initiative emails should consist of, etc.; new collaborations and more partnerships (secret for now). 

After this first presentation, Dora gives the opportunity to ask some questions.
1. Do partners need to be English speaking? It would be better if the partners speak English to communicate. The team uses English as the official language. However, it is not a mandatory characteristic. 
2. How does your team embody diversity? EFPSA tries to contact basically every organization, not only psychology organizations. It contacts travel organizations, promotional, literature organizations, etc. 
3. What is something you learned by being in the team? Dora said that for her being in the team is amazing because it’s actually a small team so they can rely on each other, brainstorming is much easier when it’s a small team, and they also became good friends. 

External Relations Office. 

The External Relation office is under the supervision of EFPSA’s president, Diana. The office also has the position of Public Relations Coordinator (which is not filled yet). The External Relation coordinator is a very new position which has just been filled. The External Relations Office has also two other positions: the Advocacy Coordinator and three Advocacy Writers. 
The main purpose of the office is to establish and support meaningful partnerships between external entities and the federation. The team also tries to represent EFPSA appropriately. 
The External Relations Office has 2 teams:

1. Public relations: *not presented along the presentation*.
2. External relations: Rosàrio is the External Relations Coordinator, while Uro is the External Relation Team Member. The goal for the team is to maintain and develop EFPSA external collaborations with the aim of sharing best practices, beneficial collaborations and improving EFPSA’s visibility. 

The team can be described in three different words: strategic, ambitious and caring. 

The main tasks of External Relations team are:

• Maintaining and developing EFPSA’s external collaborations
• Improving EFPSA’s visibility
• Representing EFPSA at relevant external events
• Sharing best practices with other organizations
• The team is also actively engaged in the organizations and realization of EHSAS – European Health Psychology Students Association. 

The team has relationships with several organizations, not only from the psychology area (PSYSSA student division, for example) but also in the health fields (IFMSA – International Federation of Medical Student Associations) and other fields as well, like the Junior Enterprises Europe, Elsa – European Law Student Association. Finally, the team is also part of EHSAS. In fact, it works with medical, dentistry and pharmaceutical students. 

What the team has accomplished so far:

• Firstly, the team developed the social event with PsySSA Student Division (South Africa). 
• The team is also working on a big project called “The mental health project”: a four-day event and a collaboration between 11 partner organizations from around the world. 
• The team is also finishing to develop the EHSAS Joint Memorandum of Understanding, a document that they created in order to formally establish a partnership.
• They presented EFPSA to other organizations. 
• Finally, they are developing an External Relations EFPSA Magazine Corner. 

What is coming up:

• External Relation Database: which means that they are joining up all the psychology students’ organizations from around the world. In other words, they are increasing connections with organizations around the world through this external relation database.
• Collaboration with EFPSA Office to improve External Relation aspects on the EFPSA website: the goal is to make the website more accessible to people/organizations who want to contact and establish a relationship with the team.
• The last goal is to start working on an in-person exchange with an external organization.  

After the presentation of the goals they achieved and the goals that they will hopefully achieve, Rosa showed us some small pictures from the Mental Health Project and from the event “High – Tea and Trivia Social Gathering”. 

Contacts:

1. Advocacy: the Advocacy Team was presented by Emilia, the advocacy coordinator. The team is composed of four people: the advocacy coordinator and three advocacy writers. They are working together in order to present EFPSA’s opinions on relevant issues. Emilia described the Advocacy Team as one of the voices that speak for the EFPSA mind. 

The team can be described in 3 different words: proactive, passionate and cat memes (it’s kind of a joke because she said that the team is composed of “cat people”). 

The main tasks of the advocacy team can be summarized into five categories: 

1. Awareness of ongoing issues 🡪in order to respond appropriately to what they consider relevant.
2. Research and document 🡪 they want to base their opinions on real facts, so they’re always looking for scientific literature and other reports and public documents.
3. Developing position papers & statements
4. Contact with stakeholders 🡪 for causes that the team considers important. Moreover, the contact with them implies reaching out to the people that actually hold a position of power.
5. Developing internal policies 🡪  which is basically a set of rules and practices that inform the work in EPSA regarding different aspects. 

At this point of the presentation Emilia gave the floor to another speaker: Sude, one of the adovacy writers. 

What they have accomplished so far: 

• Anti-Discrimination Policy 
• Refugee and International Migrants and Their Mental Health 
• Open Access

Sude also explained that they changed their name from Policy Team to Advocacy Team because the old name wasn’t really in line with their goals for this mandate. In fact, they wanted to focus more on advocacy in general because they wanted to create change rather than just writing policy papers. 

What is coming up: 

• Creating Advocacy Guidelines for EFPSA and for further generations. 
• Creating an advocacy workshop for their community.
• Collaboration with Conference 2021 and creation of the “Call to Action Paper” 
• Collaboration with SII
• Attending conferences and round tables to expand their knowledge on Advocacy 

Some things that motivate the members to be part of the team are: passion for the teamwork, collaborating with people, sharing knowledge and learning together, discovering new career path, learning knowledge that could be helpful in their future work, teamwork, time management, meeting amazing people, improving writing and communication skills, creating spreadsheets.

How does your team embody diversity? The interests are pretty similar, but the team is actually composed of members who are very different from each other, they have different backgrounds, come from different countries and even different continents. The community of EFPSA is extremely diverse and international so you are always going to work with people from all over Europe. Diversity is actually the key word to describe the community. The team also promotes diversity: for example, they had a collaboration with a South African Psychological Association that had a different perspective from the typical Western/European model. 

Camilla Perra

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DAY 4 – Grants office & Journal

Vittoria Mirabelli

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DAY 5 – Training & EFPSA Office

A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY

The training office has a long history, the first training session can be tracked back to 2009 at the 20^th BMR meeting in Turkey. 

It was thanks to Daniel Lucas, a psychology student interested in training sessions, that “training sessions” became a reality for EFPSA. After the first training session that took place in Turkey, the Board Management was so amazed that decided to organize also a trainers event. The first TtT can be tracked back to 2010 in Austria. 

The training office was founded during the 2010 and 2011 mandate by Daniel Lucas and Dominica Shimiska. The founders of the training office had one sole mission: to support the development of EFPSA as an organization.

Ever since, the training office – TO has grown, has educated many new trainers, has developed a strong base of training events and has always kept up with every demands. The TO is a service for EFPSA, EFPSA’s active members, psychology students, and this means that the trainers contribute to all activities and endeavors of EFPSA, which includes external representation. So, this is why the training office is very committed with the development of EFPSA trainers alongside with the development of EFPSA itself. 

Martina Fontana

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DAY 6 – SII & study & travel abroad

Francesca Gatta

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Day 7 – Members Office & MRs

MEMBER REPRESENTATIVES – MEMEBERS OFFICE
The Members Office is composed by a huge group of people from different countries around Europe.

The main roles of them are:
1. Member Representatives Officer:
-Coordinating and encouraging MR team and EFPSA team
-Keeping collaboration between MOs, Oos and EPFSA
-Organizing the job of Members Office
-Enlarging our network to new countries
-Verifying MR quorum is reached during voting

2. Member and Observer Coordinator:
-Supporting Mrs
-Communicating with OOs
-New possible organizations
-Taking care of Vice MRs
-Collaborating with Veronika

3. Members Office Team Members:
-Keeping in touch with other EPFSA Teams
-Helping MRs, Vices, MRO and MoC
-Taking part of meetings
-Time planning
-Social proposals

The Members Office have reached some goals:
-EFPSA Week
-Getting in touch with Montenegro EPFSA
-Linking the EB with the MRs, Vices and MOs
-Meeting with MO Presidents
-Supporting MRs and Vices understand their roles
Other goals in the future:
-EPFSA Day
-Individual membership
-Observer applying for all members
-Adv of Congress
-EB and MR
-Checking documents
The members Office’s goals are:
to guide, to supervise, to support the Mr and Vice Mr team, to link MO with EFPSA.

 MEMBER REPRESENTATIVES (MRs)

Mrs and Vice Mrs are:
-Member Representatives for every Member country
-three Vice from every country
-two Observer Representatives
The main tasks of them are:
-Linking EPFSA and Member Organizations
-To associate Vice and Mrs from different countries
The most important values of them are: the internationality, the sharing of psychological issues in society, the link between people
They have reached some goals during the last 7 months:
-Student exchange between Malta and Austria
-To meet new friends
-To involve new Mr members
-6 meetings, one each month, 4 workshops
-20 calls, 4 voting sessions
Other future plans:
-Meeting between EB and MR in Malta
-A big conference in Portugal
-A Congress in Cyprus

Silvia Bolla

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