1940 - 1950
When students decided to change the world
Europe still smelled of smoke and ash when students from seven countries decided not to wait for someone else to reconcile them. It was 1948, three years after a war that claimed 55 million lives. They met in Stockholm with one idea - that exchanging people changes the world. No budget, no offices, just the belief that young people could do more. In that first year of AIESEC, 89 students crossed borders that had been closed until yesterday.
1946
A café in Paris that changed everything
Jan Maatsa organized a meeting in a Parisian café. Nine students from eight different countries showed up. No one knew that this informal conversation would become the foundation of one of the largest youth organizations in the world.
1948
A first attempt, three months earlier
Students from nine universities and seven countries met in Liège, Belgium, with the idea of starting something that hadn't existed before. It was an informal meeting, without a name or statutes, just a feeling that Europe needed more than rebuilt factories. Three months later, that idea got its name in Stockholm.
1948
AIESEC is born
On July 2nd, 1948, in Stockholm, Bertil Hedberg and students Jaroslav Zich from Czechoslovakia and Stanislas Callens from Belgium founded AIESEC, headquartered in Prague with Jaroslav Zich as its first president. The goal was one - peace through understanding.
1949
Statutes, purpose and identity
A year after founding, representatives of seven countries gathered again, this time to turn the idea into something tangible. The organization's statutes were adopted and its purpose defined - building friendly relations between nations through direct contact between young people. AIESEC stopped being an agreement among a few and became an institution with rules.