AIESEC as an Organization

               

                To begin, I wish to explain what exactly is AIESEC. It is a student run global organization that focuses on international student exchange. The organization formed when a group of students after World War II decided to prevent such a world war from ever occurring again. Their focus was to provide cultural understanding. With understanding, conflict would be lessened. Their goal is achieved through sending students abroad on internships in over 110 different countries. Not only does the student get to experience a different culture, but he/she also gains professional experience from working for a company. Since most of the internships are paid and all come with accommodation, it is a very affordable way to travel.

AIESEC as a global organization has undergone much change, but I wish to focus on the specific change that occurred within AIESEC Illinois.  When I joined the organization, I instantly fell in love with the culture. I also strongly believed that everyone should have a chance to travel even if one does not have a lot of money and this organization gave people that chance. The two main functions of the organization were to send people abroad and to create internships within the United States for students from abroad to utilize. There were a few problems that the organization was struggling with:

1. Not many knew of it's existence
2. The executive board had no money to spend/invest in the organization
3. We have not generated a contract with a US company in years
4. There was a huge turnover of members

There was one thing that we were doing right which was sending people abroad. In 2009-10 academic school year, 15 people gained internships and went abroad. In 2010-11 school year, the elected president resigned after serving for just a couple of weeks, due to the high demand and transaction cost the organization was demanding. One of the six remaining executive board members stepped up for the presidency and I was approached to take on his Vice President position which I accepted.

During our executive board's cadence, we increased our presence on campus resulting in higher numbers of people at info sessions and many applicants wanting to join the organization. We generated profit and had money to invest back in our members. We signed a contract and brought an intern from abroad, which has not been done in years. My team was in charge of sending students abroad and we doubled the amount of people sent from the previous year.

The organization grew and prospered but at a very high transaction cost. When I became the Vice President of sending people abroad, I did not know anything about visa procedures, websites to use for internship search or anything about the process. I put in hours of work into learning the systems. My inbox was flooded with over a hundred emails daily. I met with my team weekly. To afford this, I put my schoolwork secondary and dropped a class, I reduced the amount of hours I had at work, cut down on sleep and eliminated leisure time from my calendar. As the school-year went on, the time commitment somewhat lessened.

Now the new board made the organization grow even more with the structure that we left them. AIESEC is prospering and even though the transaction costs were quite high, it was worth it.