A Memorable Farewell Party with Stipendium Hungaricum Graduates

The Alumni Hungary team is getting more and more experienced at organising such an event and we always learn something new and try to draw on the findings of last year’s event. That is why we came up with something new, and something more inclusive this year. We wanted to give our alumni volunteers a greater role in participating and in guiding freshly graduated students building on their own Hungarian experiences. So international students did not only have the opportunity to network with each other but they could learn a lot of useful things and tips from the volunteers who were eager and very excited to help.

We started the event with short introductory sessions about the Alumni Hungary Network and about the Tempus Public Foundation as always, but the main activity centred around topics of professional relevance. We had four tables for discussions, each facilitated by alumni volunteers who felt strongly about a given topic

• Career building
• Networking through the Alumni Hungary Portal
• Project sharing
• Diplomacy – Cooperation with embassies

We expected student guests to be active based on our previous experiences, but they definitely overcame our expectations. Every participant chose a table of their preference quickly and the conversations started at once. Everybody was contributing and had his or her own questions. The table for career and diplomacy were the most popular ones. Students could learn more about how to start a career path and what the main steps to follow and maintain a career plan are, how to make flexible and smart goals (infographic is coming soon). Participants at the ‘Diplomacy’ table were collecting ideas on how to approach a foreign embassy in Hungary to build effective alumni relations and to promote the Alumni Hungary network and Hungary. After 30 minutes everybody had the chance to switch to another table and elaborate their ideas regarding a different topic. For us these conclusions and outcomes are also invaluable in the planning process related to alumni activities.

After these sessions, students had plenty of time to mingle and have fun conversations over a coffee or dinner. They could participate in different playful activities such as writing messages for future students, tag themselves on our world map which showed how exciting it is to have students from all around the world. We also had a little photo booth where students could take graduation photos and we prepared an “I will always remember board, where guests could write down their greatest Hungarian memories. It was apparent that students tried to travel around Hungary to collect experiences (some of them really loved Debrecen and everything the city can offer).

Having touched upon Hungarian memories, we should also mention our Farewell speech contest, which was won by Majd Hammoudeh. You can reach the full speech here.

We definitely used our time at the Brody Studios fully, so it was a really effective and eventful afternoon that hopefully was worth attending for everybody. After a party like this, we are always a little sad because a lot of students and volunteers leave Hungary and travel back to their home country, but we are sure that we will keep in touch with them as members of our alumni community.  So as a next step, we are looking forward to meet new scholarship students in the autumn and recruit new members in our rows. Of course, we will give you a short summary about that event too.