Why it was needed

We felt that the majority of the student population knew nothing about the varied population of international students at the University and so we wanted to hold a celebration/educational event of these, as well as welcoming the new international students that started in January.

What's being done

We organised a day in the main area of the University, that we decorated with various flags, which consisted of lots of different stalls for the varying nationalities. There was one for the Polish Society, one for the Chinese Society and the Multi Cultural Society created stalls for the Czech Republic, India, Great Britain and South Korea. Each stall had samples of national dishes to try, examples of culture and languages. Other stalls we included to add to the day included a welcome stall with info about joining the societies, courses in speaking English etc, a flag making workshop and a quiz stall, which included a "Guess the Nationality" photo quiz! We also had some entertainment from a Congolese drum group, as well as music brought in by the different nationalities of students. Finally to really give it that carnival feel we invited the Circus Society to come and do some juggling and more!

How it started

After we had the idea we went to see our Volunteer Support Officer, Alex, to see if it was a suitable event. Once we had the go ahead for it we organised a meeting for our Multi Cultural Society, as well as inviting members from all the other international student societies. Once we had a budget we gave everyone involved a set amount to spend on ingredients and then they were to make their own food. We had weekly meetings running up to the event to make sure everyone was happy with what was happening.

More

We would like to possibly see this event happen twice a year, as it was good for the January starting students and would be useful for those starting in September too! We were also unable to get in touch with the Sikh, Islamic, Greek or Hellenic Societies, and with their input we could include a larger range of cultures and get more people involved!