Members from UBCIA Exec, the Turkish Students Association, the Russian Club, the Pakistani Students Association, the Arab Students Association, the Caribbean African Association, the Tamil Students Association and the Taiwanese Association.

The UBC Intercultural Alliance (UBC IA) is a student run organisation that was founded in September 2013 with the aim of bringing together the cultural clubs across the UBC campus to foster intercultural understanding and promote cross-cultural collaboration.

In November, they held their first event: the Mix and Mingle.  

Fourteen club presidents along with an exec member of their choice attended the event along with the UBC IA exec team. The aim of the event was to help clubs bridge the gap between acquaintances and friends in order to proceed in collaborating on events for Term 2 and beyond.

The event was a huge success as everyone turned out and dived right into conversation with other cultural clubs. Within minutes, club presidents were discussing how their clubs could collaborate on an event and reach out to a wider audience. Many conversations revolved around cultural commonalities and differences, typical annual events held by each club and how to get more people at UBC on board with the increasingly popular notion of intercultural understanding. The Polish Club interacted with the Caribbean African Association while the Russian Club showed card tricks to the Turkish Students Association and the Arab Students Association bonded with the German Club over the great food provided by Mahoney’s.

UBC IA would like to thank all of the club presidents and exec members for attending this event and continuing to support this initiative and the UBC Equity and Inclusion Office for sponsoring this event. Next semester, UBC IA will be hosting a cultural fair in which all the cultural clubs will be presenting their cultures for everyone to explore – stay tuned!

For more information about UBC IA, check out their website, blog or Facebook page.

Photos by Bena Peters, Event Photographer
– to see the rest of the photographs from this event, check out the Facebook page.

Words by Cicely Blain, UBC IA Blog and Newsletter Coordinator
– to submit poetry, artwork, photography or essays to the UBC IA blog, contact newsletter.ubcia@hotmail.com