What is a SocialErasmus Event?

It is an event that engages foreign students into something that has a positive effect on society - whether it relates to Ecology, Human Rights or Animal Protection - just any society-beneficial aspect of our lives. Exchange students together with the Czech ones go and plant trees, help to repair castles, go picking trash from the forests, go and walk the dogs from shelter, visit hospitals to paint and colour them or to make children laugh.

See the official SocialErasmus video.

How does SocialErasmus look in Ostrava?

ESN consideres SocialErasmus activities to be one of the top priority as we do believe that it is a great way of linking the whole world in Ostrava. Here are some of the SocialErasmus events we have done so far. SocialErasmus events are mostly organized in cooperation with the other ESN section in Ostrava.

Dogwalkings

Almost every semester, ESN organizes dogwalking events - exchange students come to dogshelter, bring some cookies or toys they buy on their oown for doggies and take the doggies for a walk in the nature for the whole afternoon. For sure doggies are the happiest at that time, but you can also see the satisfaction in the faces of exchange students who feel that they are both giving and gaining lots of love. In Spring 2012, ESN organized a large SocialErasmus event helping the dogs in the shelter: exchange students came to shelter and took pictures with doggies that were then printed and displayed all around the city for people to see how amazing dogs there are waiting in the shelter. See some of the dogwalking videos here: HomeForDoggies1, HomeForDoggies2, Dogwalking. 

Free Hugs

Time to time, ESN organizes a merry event called Free Hugs. Going out in the street, hugging random people, telling them about chances young people nowadays have to travel around the world is a meaningfully spent afternoon for us. See the video of the first FreeHugs we organized. 

SocialErasmus Cinema

Another SE activity we decided to make a yearly tradition is ESN Cine. An event during which children from orphanages mainly, but also children from regular basic schools from all around the city gather to experience various countries of Europe, Asia an America live in a presentation (very lively one!) by Erasmus students. Children love the way we show them world, they could dance with our students, meet their traditions, learn some words of their languages and mainly see that they are not different from us and therefore they do not need to have any prejudice. The evening ends up with one of the brand new movies for both children and adults. 

Benefitial Concert

In April 2014, ESC organized the first SocialErasmus Benefitial Concert which was super successful and therefore from then on it is considered to be a priority event in the SocialErasmus activities. Exchange students first visited an orphanage where they met children and talked to them about living in other countries. Afterwards in the evening, over a hundred people from all around the world gathered in a club to listen to their Erasmus friends play a great show. Besides the musiciens from actual semester, even one ex-erasmus student came with his band to play on this occasion. In between the concerts, there was an auction of experiences (kiting lesson, a day with horses, a weekend in a hut in the mountains, tennis lesson, picnic, being a model with a professional photographer, etc.) - ESN gained over 7 000 CZK in this auction and all this money was used to buy a huge trampoline for the children in the orphanage. On 1st May the most active Erasmus students went to orphanage again, gave children the trampoline and had a barbecue with them. It is impossible to describe the atmosphere that there was both at the concert and in the orphanage, but you can see the video that may bring it nearer to you: Benefitial Concert Official Video. That the official representative video. To suck the atmosphere even closer, see two final songs of the Erasmus band. Despite the poor quality of the video or the sound, you will probably love it for the atmosphere: Benefitial Concert Atmosphere video.  

Flea market

Another random event that became a regular activity is SocialErasmus flea market. At the end of every semester, exchange students are leaving the city and they need to get rid of many things. Some of them throw them away, others give them to their Czech friends. We do believe that these things would be best used by those who really need them. Therefore we collect clothes, plates, hair-dryers, bags, shoes, towels, blankets, pillows, accessories, just anything exchange students do not need anymore and poor people may use. We then give it all to Charity.