International Student Support have been developing a volunteer peer mentoring scheme to help new international students settle into life in the UK, meet new people and improve their language skills.
A small pilot was launched in September 2013 to April 2014 for 44 students, which involved matching each mentee with a mentor from a different country.
The scheme will be launched officially in the new academic year and International Student Support will start recruiting mentors and mentees from September. All current students can apply to become mentors, including home students. They encourage students who have taken part in extracurricular activities to get involved.
Mentoring is a two-way learning relationship, described by participants on the pilot as ‘learning through sharing’. Both mentees and mentors reported improving their cultural awareness, time management and communication skills. As well as gaining valuable experience for their CV.
You can view a selection of student case studies from the pilot project at http://tinyurl.com/CultureConnect
If you would like more information contact CultureConnect@shu.ac.uk or visit www.facebook.com/CultureConnectSHU