Fanshawe College is home to thousands of international students and the college understands the feeling of being away from home.
To make the students feel at home the college student union organizes several festivities and programs.
Tyler Hetherington is the events and activities programmer for FSU and he says they start working at the beginning of the year.
“I make sure we get a list from the international office that says how many students are from each country. And then the ones that are in the top five or so we probably make big events for and then there are clubs, usually for a bunch of the other countries,” Hetherington says.
He says they do a lot of events for international students throughout the year. From putting big shows and performances to food form everywhere.
“And then we do culture game kind events quite a bit. We do Bollywood events, we do Desi events, we do pretty much
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any kind of event you think of, there’s international Flag Day coming up and stuff like that,” he says.
The FSU organizes events that international students can come to and feel like they’re at home.
Keren Nanneti, the president of Fanshawe’s student union says they include international students and culture as a whole.
“So, we kind of touch base on every culture that is part of Fanshawe College. So, we introduced lots of international
festivals, food culture, traditions, and lots of activities do that are related to different cultures,” she says.
As Tyler Hetherington said the planning begins at the beginning of the year but the FSU starts planning the events one or two months prior to the actual scheduled date of the event.
To this Nanneti says the FSU works on a four months calendar basis.
“All throughout the year, we usually don’t have as much. And even during the summer because there’s just about 50% of the student population on campus. So, there are not as many events. But we start on with events from September onwards. And there are lots of events that we plan on having,” Nanneti says.
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Kevin Masterson, the events and activities manager for the Fanshawe Student Union says the international students spend a lot of money to be here and by hosting events from their culture, they want them to know they’re part of the Fanshawe community.
“I mean for Indian students we do a Holi celebration. We do a Diwali celebration. We do, you know, Bollywood pubs for our Asian students. We do a Lunar New Year celebration. We did a moon celebration as well. Autumn Moon Festival,” Masterson says.
‘It’s all about respecting cultures and making everyone feel like home.’
FSU works with the international center to take every possible step to make the international students feel welcomed and a part of the community.
Holi celebration at Fanshawe College-
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