garagErasmus: Reuniting the Erasmus Generation

Published on April 21, 2014

Lifestyle

A new breed of Eu­ro­peans?

SMEs and multi­na­tion­als around Eu­rope crave the unique abil­i­ties ac­quired by the Eras­mus Gen­er­a­tion while study­ing abroad: cul­tural aware­ness, mul­ti­lin­gual­ism, adapt­abil­ity, en­tre­pre­neur­ial spirit and in­no­va­tion. Do they al­ways find them? The an­swer is no, says Francesco, and we are all los­ing out be­cause of this.

At the same time, the Eras­mus Gen­er­a­tion ac­tively seeks op­por­tu­ni­ties across Eu­rope e.g. jobs and busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties, in­ter­na­tional part­ner­ships and pro­jects; a bor­der­less lifestyle. This gap has been recog­nised by Francesco and his team, who are now try­ing to bridge re­gional needs with Eu­ro­pean po­ten­tial by in­creas­ing the mo­bil­ity of ideas and skills. Eu­rope needs this new breed of Eu­ro­peans and they need Eu­rope.

Eu­rope's La­tent Po­ten­tial

The mis­sion of garagEras­mus Foun­da­tion

garagEras­mus was started by Eras­mus alumni from Italy in­clud­ing Francesco Cappè, in 2011. Since then, they have gath­ered 7500 Eras­mus alumni on the check-in plat­form of garageras­mus.​org, and with the help of the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion, the plat­form is ex­pected to grow by 250, 000 new mem­bers per year from 2015. They hope to reach 1 mil­lion by 2017.

In the mean­time, the garagEras­mus Foun­da­tion launched the Pri­vate and Pub­lic Al­liance in June 2013 and is look­ing for mo­ti­vated and en­tre­pre­neur­ial-minded Eu­ro­peans to start up local Eu­ro­pean Al­liances be­tween pri­vate and pub­lic or­gan­i­sa­tions in dif­fer­ent Eu­ro­pean cities, under the um­brella of the garagEras­mus Foun­da­tion. All Al­liances from around Eu­rope, in co­op­er­a­tion, would help ful­fill the goal of bridg­ing re­gional needs with Eu­ro­pean po­ten­tial through mo­bil­ity. As the on­line pro­fes­sional net­work is grow­ing, op­por­tu­ni­ties would ig­nite both vir­tu­ally and phys­i­cally, through match­ing events or­gan­ised at local level. The first pi­lot-event will take place in Pisa in Sep­tem­ber 2014 (at Pisa In­ter­na­tional Air­port, Ter­mi­nal B).

A Pri­vate-Pub­lic en­gine to trig­ger the en­ergy of a new Eu­rope

Free­dom and mo­bil­ity have al­ways been a pow­er­ful cor­ner­stone for the Eu­ro­pean Sin­gle Mar­ket since its cre­ation. De­spite this free­dom, only 2% of Eu­ro­peans live in a Mem­ber State other than their own. The Eras­mus Gen­er­a­tion offer Eu­rope tremen­dous po­ten­tial for eco­nomic, po­lit­i­cal and so­cial progress. A net­work of 3 mil­lion may sound like a tall order, but the po­ten­tial ben­e­fits are en­tic­ing.

Mean­while, it is worth men­tion­ing that less than 1% out of the 24 mil­lion stu­dents in Eu­rope in 2010-2011 be­came part of the Eras­mus Gen­er­a­tion. The promi­nent ques­tion to be asked is how can we, the Eras­mus Gen­er­a­tion, mo­bilise and help make the Eras­mus ex­pe­ri­ence ac­ces­si­ble to those other 99% of stu­dents. Imag­ine the po­ten­tial and the fu­ture of Eu­rope if these fig­ures could even­tu­ally be re­versed!