Meadna - Please tell us a little about yourself?

Rina - Hallo, everyone! My name is Rina Adem and I am 21 years old. At the age of 8 year I moved to the Netherlands with my family. At the moment, I am studying law at a university. Besides studying, I also play an active roll in the Eritrean youth association of the Netherlands and my roll in this association is being one of the chairmen of a committee inside the association.

Meadna – What kinds of activities does your association carry out?

Rina - We organize several events in the Netherlands, such as the celebration of the independence day of Eritrea this year. We planned to organize activities at several ground and that is sport and party. Further we have got different committees and every committee has got its own task to do. For example, for the finance we got an independent committee, but at the same time it works together with the other committee of our association.

The project that we have been carrying out is to find a way to involve more young Eritrean at the most effective way. Furthermore, how we can enlarge and enforce our association. Therefore we held a research to know how we can succeed in doing that. First of all, it was really important to know how many Eritreans between the ages of 14 and 35 live in the Netherlands, in order to know if we are reaching enough number of them. After we did that we made plans for three age categories. For the youth between 14 and 35, the children between 5 and 13 and at last for the parents. During our research we found out that if we want to reach the youth Successfully, we need to do more than just organizing parties. Even more we have to offer them activities which they cannot find outside our Eritrean community, so they can keep coming back to us.

Further, if we want to tackle the problem that we have now we have to begin with the little ones. So, they will have the bond with their background. At the same time,we are making it possible for the parents to learn the Dutch language and culture and tradition of the society where their children are living in. That way we can build the bridge by taking away the communication barrier between the parents and the children. This will eventually help us realize our goals with the youth.

Meadna – what was your impression of the conference?

Rina - I really liked the conference. It was for the first time for me. So, I did not know what to expect, but I must say that I was pleasantly surprised. It was something to be proud of to see how much and what each association of a country is doing and achieving. It motivates me to do the same things or even more for the youth association in The Netherlands and to be eager to help our people. Furthermore, I was happy with the presence of Mr. Yemane, because it is important for the Eritrean youth in Europe really to have the chance to ask whatever they want about topics related to Eritrea. So, overall I had a positive experience.

Meadna - how you do you manage to both study and actively play a leading role in the association?

Rina - Have to admit that it is sometimes hard to combine both things, specially, during my exams. However, if you organize yourself very well, that should not cause you any problem. For example, handling things straight a way if you can, that way you can avoid time problem and communicate with the rest of the members. Ask if anyone can take over your task, just for now till you have enough time. So communication and organization is really important for me to manage and succeed in both things, but most of all it is the will to make a success of this.

Meadna - who are your Mentors?

Rina - The roll model in my life is my grandmother, who left Eritrea at a real young age to work. She survived lots of obstacles in her life and kept fighting to realize those things that she wanted to realize. Even though she made her mistakes she never stopped loving us and finally she did get there where she wanted to get. So, when I see that it stimulates me to go on, even if I make mistakes. As longs as I keep learning from my mistakes and fighting to achieve something, then it is ok. I also look up to the Eritrean people who fought for thirty years without giving in or giving up. So, we all can now celebrate the independence day of Eritrea and for this reason we all have to work hard for Eritrea so we can thanks those people for what they did for us.