I am an international student, and when I began my studies, I felt it was really hard to get involved in the community here. It was hard to make friends as well, because it’s difficult to find topics to talk about. Now that I volunteer as a part of the Global Engagement Student Committee, I’ve found a lot of people I can talk to about the issues international students face. As a committee, we create events and activities which students can use to share their cultural backgrounds and learn about others’ cultures.

A lot of students see the Global Student Centre as something that’s just for international students, but it’s actually for all students – that includes Canadian students looking to know more about the world, and students from foreign countries looking to know more about Canada. The Global Talent Show is one of the biggest events we’ve planned; we had more than 300 people attend. I am a design focused student, so I designed posters and made the trailer videos for them, and on the day of event I worked reception and helped to organize things. I was really proud of the work I did. SFU is an intercultural community – we have students from all over the world. We help to create a secure space for people from different cultures to socialize and interact.