Denmark's Founding Story

Danish co-founder of AIESEC in 1948, Kaj Verner Slot, tells:

“For many of us [Danes] the starting at university was delayed because of the German occupation. Universities were closed. We had the age to go to the army after the war, and I served for 2 years as lieutenant in the artillery. Then, I joined the business school“. Soon after, “I went to a meeting in Stockholm”, as observer and decided to “take over the AIESEC job, and develop it in Copenhagen.”

“There was a great demand by young people to get out of the country, but we couldn’t go anywhere. We were young and there was no way of travelling. People wanted to go out of the country on summer holidays. We had 3 months of no university, so we arranged multi-national schemes with France and Holland to exchange students.”

“In 1951, Italy, Germany and Austria came into the organisation. In 1953 we were doing 4,000 exchanges. It developed fast.”

“We were children of a war that had grown demand to see other places. If you look at the world 60 years after, Europe is still at a political level of discussion about being united. But AIESEC already had accomplished that union at that time: getting the unification of students into one organisation.”