Travelling Europe to follow different courses, dedicated members and close friendships. Three members from BEST Delft explain all about their unique association.
Ligaya Wopereis, Regine Boussa and Shakthi Prassadh Sridhar from BEST. (Photo: Sam Rentmeester)
- Name: BEST Delft
- Members: 30
- When established: 2009
- Associated area: Europe including Russia and Turkey
What does BEST stand for?
Shakthi Prassadh Sridhar (24), Treasurer: “Board of European Students of Technology.”
Who can become a member?
Ligaya Wopereis (22), President: “Anyone. Membership is free, but if you become what we call a ‘BESTie’, you have to contribute to our association. In return for working for us, you have access to a lot of training and travelling opportunities. And a family of friends. We are currently looking for new board members.”
What kind of training opportunities do you offer members?
Regine Boussa (20), Vice President: “BEST organises technical courses around Europe for all TU Delft students. When you become a member you get many more travelling opportunities, for example, you can attend courses on leadership, fundraising, corporate relations and human resources.”
There are 95 local BEST groups in 33 different European countries. Can you elaborate on this?
Shakthi: “BEST organises events for approximately 1.3 million students divided across 95 universities across Europe.”
Ligaya: “Apart from these set events we are free to organise whatever we want to.”
What are the two major events you organise?
Shakthi: “We hold a week-long ‘Spring Course’ whose topic changes every year. This year it was Swarm Robotics, basically robots that communicate with each other. The cost of this event is approximately € 45, this includes everything: accommodation, drinks, food, and so on.”
Ligaya: “The other one is the European Best Engineering Competition (EBEC). Students work in teams on an engineering problem presented by a company. The winning team gets to go to the Benelux EBEC, if you win this you go on to the finals where you compete against teams from all over Europe.”
BESTies travel a lot. How do you afford this?
Ligaya: “We do! I attended 10 BEST events in 14 different European countries in slightly over half a year.”
Shakthi: “We know the art of traveling cheap. We even gave a workshop on it: when to book your flight, which website, what form of transportation to go where, and so on. If you are a BESTie, other members abroad will likely host you for free.”
- In this series we meet TU Delft’s student fraternities. These fraternities are called gezelligheidsverenigingen in Dutch, which translates as ‘social clubs’, but in fact they’re far more than that. If you’d like to suggest a fraternity for us to cover, please email us at delta@tudelft.nl.
Elise Mooijman / Freelance redacteur
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