- Latin American Community Orientation Sessions:
New international students arriving in Brisbane are usually disoriented and require a lot of support while they settle down and learn to know how to get around.
Their education providers usually offer orientation sessions to respond to this need. Nevertheless, given the diversity of the students, their orientation activities just provide a general overview of the Brisbane community. Despite cultural communities constitute an important support to new migrants from the same cultural background, those orientation sessions lack specific information about the cultural communities in Brisbane including the Latin American one.
As such and in partnership with associations and groups from the Latin American community, our Latin American Community Orientation Sessions intend to complement general orientation activities by providing community and cultural appropriate information to new international students from Latin America. Likewise, they intend to integrate Latin students to the local community through a diverse range of activities.
Please contact us if you are new to Australia and would like to attend one of our Latin American Community Orientation Sessions, or if you are a settled member or organization part of this community and would like to promote your services through these events.
Latin American Movie Club / Language & Culture Exchange:
As part of their intercultural experience in Brisbane, Latin American students among others look for opportunities to engage with the local community. Nevertheless, possibilities to do so are usually limited to interactions with their homestay families and teachers.
Similarly, local students studying Spanish at local institutions have scarce opportunities to engage with Spanish speakers in Brisbane.
To address this disconnection, we have created a Latin American Movie Club / Language & Culture Exchange. This project intends to create a space of integration and multicultural exchange between the Spanish and English-speaking communities in Brisbane. In addition, it aims to promote the learning and practice of both Spanish and English through a Latin American cinema forum.
Please contact us if you would like to attend one of the Latin American cinema forum sessions or support this project in any form.
- Volunteering in the Community:
Among international students in Brisbane, there is a lot of wasted talent, as well as eagerness to get professional work experience and to engage with the local community. Nonetheless, opportunities to do so are rare due to students’ lack of English skills and Australian qualifications and experience. At the same time, there are many community and social projects that rely on the good faith, skills and support of kind volunteers to continue running on.
As a result, our Volunteering in the Community project aims to get international students involved with local communities in Brisbane through community and social projects. This also provides a significant opportunity for them to give back to the local community, apply their skills and gain international work experience.
We are currently looking for community projects in which international students can get involved. Please contact us if you are an international student who would like to get engaged or if you are a member of the local community and know of any volunteer opportunities or community projects which international students could assist.