A journey with history!
Updated: Aug 15, 2019
On Wednesday, the 8th of May the sky in Maastricht was oddly grey, while our expectations were painted by white, blue and yellow, the colors in the flag of Limburg’s government building.
The Limburg Province kindly invited us to visit the government building, a place where history was made and keeps being made every day. As Youth Mayors we were thrilled to visit this place, there was a sense of solemnity among the group, as well among our school representatives.
Our coordinators Chiel Mooij (also a current Global Politics teacher) and Pete Killham (currently Geography teacher) were there supporting the event, as well as a the director of the Advancement Team at school, Sandra Van den Tillaard, the Deputy Director of Secondary School, Denise Verdonschot and our project manager and school principal Lodewijk van Oord.
It was around 10 am when the group arrived in the Province, and we received a warm welcome from all the workers and people present there, including a special guest: the former Mayor Ed Johnson from Asbury Park, New Jersey, and an honorary member of the Global Parliament of Mayors. Ed was extremely kind, inspiring and definitely supportive through all our rainy journey during Wednesday.
After arriving in the province around 10 am we started with a presentation and a tour inside that area of the building, we got to see one of the original copies of the Maastricht Treaty, with the original chairs and table, and, even got the opportunity to look at all it and sitting in the very same place were the European Union was created back in 1992!
After this warm introduction and the small break with the company of some workers in the province, we got inside the Council’s Auditorium, introduced ourselves as the Youth Mayors by showing ‘‘A day in the life of a UWC Youth Mayor’’ and presented our projects. The three current projects we are working on are: the Eritrean families Integration, the European Parliament Elections awareness campaign, and a Design Competition to transform De Krul.
We also gave a glimpse about our future projects, which includes: Sustainable Mobility Exploration focused on the bikes in Harare, Zimbwawe; or the Latin American Leadership Academy (Ecuador Boot Camp and Brasil Boot Camp) to build the current and next generation of leaders in Latin America; among other future projects we are working to develop.
After this nutritive experience, we got some feedback from Province experts and of course from the former Mayor Ed Johnson, as well, we obtained a glance of time after our presentations and we used it to have more informal and meaningful conversations with all the presents.
This experience provided by the Limburg’s Province was significant to all the Youth Mayors attending and helped to build day full of learning, pitching skills, and formal fun!
