Week of international culture at UCC

THE inaugural International Cultures Week takes place at UCC, starting today. The aim is to celebrate the different cultures on campus and to acknowledge how much they enrich student life at UCC.

Overseeing the various events is Suzanne Buckley, acting international student officer. Her job was established in the late 1980s to respond to the growing needs of international students.

There are students from 75 countries at UCC. In all, some 1,400 people across all faculties are classified into three groups; visiting students; undergraduates and post graduates.

“One of the reasons UCC was declared university of the year last year by the Sunday Times was because of the diversity of students on campus,” explained Ms Buckley.

Grainne Thompson, events manager in the students’ centre in association with the international education office, is organising the events for Cultures Week.

“A lot of the work for this special week is being done voluntarily by the students. Some get sponsorship from their embassies. The plan is to have a free standing exhibition in Aras na Mac Leinn.

“Each stand will have its own flag, maps, photographs, posters, costumes, traditional crafts specific to each country, information about population, language, food and ethnic diversity.

“For example, we have students from Botswana who have a total of eight languages with English as their common language.” The other seven languages only exist in an oral tradition,” said Ms Buckley.

During the week, there will be cookery competitions, an open day for schools, a performance evening, dance, music and martial arts performances every day at lunchtime.

Students from Japan will demonstrate Origami “the art of paper craft. Mexican students will create papier mache objects. There will be a student demonstrating Ukranian egg design with hand painting.

“In conjunction with the cookery competitions, we will be publishing our own cookery book and hopefully, it will be ready for the week’s events,” said Ms Buckley.

She added that next year, when Cork will be the European Capital of Culture, the International Cultures Week will be a part of the celebrations. “UCC is becoming more popular with overseas students. For example, the number of Chinese students has doubled each year for the last two years. We’re very interested in that market.”

“Any problems that overseas students have in integrating to life at UCC have to do with obvious things like food, the weather, homesickness and adjusting to a new education system.

“We give them a good orientation programme in October. This year, for the first time ever, we celebrated the Chinese New Year on campus. We’re very open to the overseas students coming into the office.”

Ms Buckley said that there is no racism on campus.