As a couple who have travelled extensively, we have always valued the hospitality we have received in other countries, and the learning that hospitality has given us.
The situation:
As International Students, you arrive in Winnipeg each year, ready and eager to study, achieve a degree, and make a future for yourself.
- You come with high expectations, sometimes high levels of anxiety, and many questions. How will you fit into the community? How will you survive the very different climate, history and culture? With who do you share your experiences, your questions?
- This program is built on two similar programs that have been running successfully for some 25 years in the UK, one at Durham University, the other ‘Bristol Voices’ at Bristol University.
- It aims to help you, through integration, to be better able to continue and complete your studies.
- And it seeks to introduce host families to the rich range of cultures, languages, and practices that you bring to this country.
We hope hosts and students will all benefit.
Here’s how it works
- International Students interested in being hosted for several meals in the home of a Winnipeg family each term are invited to register to take part in this project.
- Assuming we have enough hosts for the number of student registrants, you will then be paired with a Winnipeg host who will, as much as possible, have some connection to your interests, etc.
- All such ‘paired’ hosts and students will be invited to gather for a meal in early October. (The original date was late September, however we realized that students would by the time not have had enough time to settle in, begin classes, get to know about the program. So, the launch was delayed by several weeks.) Matched students will be informed of the exact location, date and time closer to the invitational meal.
- Thereafter, the host is expected to invite you to their home for two more meals in the fall term and three in the winter term of the academic year.
- Your host may invite you to bring with you to the first ‘home’ meal one other international student. Note: this proviso is purely to afford you a sense of safety and confidence, knowing you are not alone in going to a strange home.
- Hosts will be responsible for ensuring you get safely from the university or residence to the home of the host and back again.
Hosts may also invite you to join them in visiting and participating in other places and activities in Winnipeg. Such invitations, however, are not to take the place of the meals in the host’s home.
This pairing will continue for the academic year, though you and your host may continue beyond that as friends if you and they so wish.
At the end of each term, there will be an opportunity for you to provide feedback, so that the program may be improved to better meet the needs of both hosts and international students.
If you would like to discuss this opportunity further before you register to take part, you can contact us at ray.temmerman@gmail.com, or via WhatsApp at 204 881 8274.
To register as an international student to take part in the program, please click the following link:
International Student Connections Student Registration
Also, please feel free to share this website, https://internationalstudentconnections.ca, with other international students.