Monday, 8pm - Club Meeting in Bremen

Monday, 8pm, Meeting Time in Bremen

Tonight the Bremen Rotaract Club had quite a productive meeting. First we listened to a presentation of a local organisation which helps people with handicap.

Then we had the "tell everyone about your ideas and how far you are with the project you're working on"-part of the meeting. The club was updated on many things, upon these:

• Next Buy-1-More-Activity
• Hands-on-Activities: 
• distributing soup to homeless people in Bremen
• redecorating a children's farm together with our sponsoring Rotary Club
• Fix date for our charter party weekend: 25th til 27th of October, 2013 (save the date!)
• Fix date for our 5th charity run: 5th of May, 2013 (save the date!)

A big topic was of course the onging (and upoming) project with Galatasaray Rotaract Club. I presented the blog to the club and announced a "call for recipes" for our cooking book and dinner project in the not so far away future. And Emre told us about another project Galatasaray is working on and where we could participate in - more about that another time.

So, to sum it up: a very productive evening.

Johanna
RAC Bremen

Presenting the "Blog Delegates" - Emre from Bremen

Hello to all! This is Emre from Bremen!

I work as an operator for a shipping company based in Überseestadt - Bremen and am also the club photographer :)

So, you can say it's a "Clark Kent" thing going on here for me ;) During daylight hanging around with vessels, and during nighttime and weekends try to catch the life and preserve it into films and cards :)

I was a member of Galatasaray since 01/2007, during those times I was in various and numerous  projects in the club (e.g. being a two-time-editor of RotaPigeon - the D.2420 magazine of Rotaractors in Istanbul), assisting nearly all of our club committees, and also worked as the club's photographer :)

And since last year, I've been a proud member of Rotaract Club Bremen!

I believe that it will be a quite enthusiastic journey between two clubs and the relationship will last years and years and years and yea.... :))

Very happy to be a part of this collaboration,cannot wait to prepare Turkisch food and even cannot wait see how our Turkisch friends in Istanbul prepare German food ! :)

Emre Adam
emre_adam@yahoo.com

Presenting the "Blog Delegates" - Ege from Istanbul Galatasaray

Liebe Freunde,

Ich möchte sagen dass diese Blog idee sehr funktional ist!

Please excuse my German, and welcome my English. :) I hope this blog would be the first steps of growing friendships. This valuable connections that we are trying to build will be our assets to raise social awareness and international tolerance and understanding. We should really keep this up from president to president and to decades to decades.

My name is Ege, vice-president of the Galatasaray Rotaract Club. 25 years old with 10 years of Rotary presence. I am currently a market research analyst in the Nielsen Company. I would like to take this opportunity to know about you further and host you guys in Istanbul !

Best Regards!

Ege ELMACI
ege.elmaci@gmail.com

Presenting the "Blog Delegates" - Johanna from Bremen

Hello to everybody,
I'm Johanna from Rotaract Club Bremen. Currently I'm past president in my club.

I work in the quality department of a software company. In my free time I love to travel, cook with and for friends and read. Luckily many of these hobbies can be performed with Rotaract, since most of my time ends up here. And that's great! :)

For this project I wish both clubs all the best, and hope that we can all meet soon in real life!

Johanna
Rotaract Club Bremen

Presenting the "Blog Delegates" - Cansu from Istanbul Galatasaray

Hi All,
I'm Cansu the Director of International services for the Galatasaray Rotaract Club in Istanbul.

Currently I'm a second year meteorological engineering at Istanbul Technical University. I also play frisbee on our university's frisbee team and travel through out Turkey for matches.

I am very excited in meeting you all and eager to move forward with international projects that will bring us closer together. I look forward to our dinner exchange and hope you will enjoy our meal.

Looking forward to your responses and getting to know you all:)

Cansu Alaeddinoğlu
International Director of Galatasaray Rotaract Club

First Step: Done!

The joint minutes of meeting from Galatasaray and Bremen Rotaract Clubs

The first step is done! Today the minutes from RAC Bremen were presented in the meeting of Galatasary RAC.

The club from Bremen now waits eagerly for the Turkish minutes to present in their meeting.

So far: no problems :)

Getting Started - Now for Real!

Here it is, the post that really gets it started.

The last week was full of writing mails and agreeing on how to begin. About project ideas - thrown in the virtual room by one side, then improved by the other side.

We decided on one first thing: in a good tradition we are going to be "contact clubs" before becoming twin clubs. This means we will exchange our meeting minutes - after having them translated to English.

On Thursday 25th of July it - so tomorrow - Galatasaray RAC has its meeting, and RAC Bremen has just made it to send the translated minutes from the last "working meeting". Aysegül, president of Galatasaray, will add the Bremen minutes to their own ones and will then distribute them in the meeting. This will be the first "club public" thing to do - really exciting for all of us :)

Additionally, during mail conversation our first project idea (next to the blog) was born:

we will collect recipes - the favourite ones from members in Germany and Turkey - and add them in a cooking book. Some of them will also be published here.

Then we will have a "dinner event": in the same week, maybe even at the same night, we will meet in groups at one members home and cook - a recipe from the other country. If the internet works with us, we will even hold a skype meeting during this event.

How does this sound to you?

The Twin Club Experiment

What is this all about?

Connected by Rotaracter Emre (former member in Turkey, now member in Germany), the Galatasaray Rotaract Club (Istanbul, Turkey) and the Rotaract Club Bremen (Bremen, Germany) decided to become Twin Clubs, to do projects together, to become close friends in Rotaract - but we wanted to do it a little bit different: in public! The idea of our blog was born.

We want to tell about the beginning of becoming Twin Clubs, the problems that occur and how we face and overcome them. We don't know yet if it will work out - but we will do our best and we will blog about it.

So, let's start it, Rotaracters from Istanbul and Bremen: The Twin Club Experiment