Why I’m a part of #GenerationFree
It’s a period of increased reactivity to stimuli both from within and from without.
Jason Silva
I joined SFL in 2016 as a local coordinator but my libertarian journey had started long before that time. It all began with a network. Once, in my third year of studies, I bumped into a lecture-long conversation with my classmate who I hadn’t communicated much with before and who fascinated me with the flow of ideas that I shared myself. This transformed into more talks, Facebook chats, a few trips to Lviv, and our first project at our university. She invited me to volunteer for Liberty Classes, where we met these cool guys who were wearing small European Students For Liberty (ESFL) pins and my curiosity started growing. Eventually I ended up at my first-ever ESFL conference in Lviv, asking people around what the difference between liberalism and libertarianism is and trying to understand why they give so many names to a mere desire of being free.
The thrive for freedom continued growing further to the extent that I made it to LibertyCon (The 2016 European Students For Liberty Conference) in Prague and right there the biggest journey of my life began. I was discovering people, I got fascinated with the way they were talking about ideas and the way they were living in the moment. During those three days of March 2016 in Prague I made the first steps to becoming the person I am now. Heading back home I realised that something inside me had changed and that I would be carrying this new feeling through my life. I filled out the application form for a Local Coordinator Program and started actively discovering the ideas of liberty. My enthusiasm for activism was growing day by day, I plunged into the most beautiful friendship one could ever have, and thus my inner happiness was beyond limits.
After I had completed Local Coordinator training, I discovered the passion that would later shape my professional life. That was marketing. Joining the ESFL marketing team was the very first thing I wanted to do, and actually did with the help of SFL. I started learning marketing from scratch. I was obtaining two degrees at that time, in law and international economics, and I didn’t have a single decent lecture on marketing in any of the universities. With ESFL I got a unique chance to perceive only that kind of information that I actually needed and it was all practice based.
Together with Katie Shoshiashvili , we launched the ESFL Monthly Newsletter. I’ve learned Photoshop and basic graphic design and have gotten deeper into events promotion, both offline and online. I have to admit that you will never find anything even slightly resembling this at a public university. And going further I happened to be running the marketing team at LibertyCon in Prague. I’ve gotten a job in marketing at one of the startups and I was able to share my knowledge with the new generation of leaders in Ukraine.
With the help of all this experience, I started working with European SFL as the Events and Communications Intern, otherwise known as my dream job. In addition, with all the skills gained and opportunities opened to SFLers, I got a job with Startup Societies Foundation, which, apart from being very challenging, helped me better discover the world of startup societies, crypto, and ways to exit governments. What is true about meeting people, and discovering opportunities and ideas with SFL, is that once you are there, you just cannot quit.
Students For Liberty can be described as a small world where magic happens. It is the place where you discover ideas that enlighten your life path, where you meet your future employers and partners, where you meet friends who become your family, where you shape your “I”, where you discover thousands of worlds that appear in every person you meet, every city you travel to, every conference you attend and in every single moment you feel life within yourself and your mind sees no limits for opportunities. It is the kind of the world and community one dreams of living in, the community of free people fighting for freedom.