Become a Global Changemaker!
Join the UvA multicultural student community!
Every year, hundreds of international study abroad students are welcomed to study at the UvA, and just as many UvA students leave to study at foreign universities. To raise students’ awareness of this opportunity and promote the various study abroad destinations, you are given a platform to share your study abroad experience and you are trained to find creative and innovative ways to support prospective students preparing for their own exchange experience.
We not only trust the honest perspective of study abroad students, we also know that peer advising plays a key role in reassuring future mobility students about what it is like to go abroad.
The UvA Cultural Exchange Ambassadors Programme is a team-based, extracurricular experience promoting equity in mobility, celebrating cultural diversity and inspiring students to engage with their community. You will be given the opportunity to use you student mobility experience (for example participating in an exchange, summer, conference, scholarships and/or virtual study abroad programme) and collaborate in various teams to complete a list of challenging but fun projects.
You will meet your fellow ambassadors during weekly sessions on Monday evening (except during and the week before exam week), spending a total of 30 hours of work on a variety of team projects.
As an ambassador, you will be trained to navigate and adapt to cultural differences, apply different strategies to capitalise on the creativity and innovation that comes with multicultural teamwork and develop your intercultural competence; a useful skill for everyone who foresees a future career where you will be working with a diverse group of people.
The programme will focus on enhancing your self-efficacy in interacting with students from different cultures with an emphasis on communication, equity-mindedness and inclusion. At the end of the programme, you will receive a certificate and a LinkedIn recommendation.
In 2015, the Cultural Exchange Ambassadors Programme won the prestigious Orange Carpet Award for the sector Higher Education. The award was granted to highlight outstanding initiatives that promote the international character of Dutch higher education.
In 2017, one of the Ambassador teams signed up for the yearly Global Ingenuity Challenge, organised by the Universitas 21 network with the theme ‘Promoting Cultural Inclusiveness in Society. The ambassador team competing on behalf of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) was awarded a joint winner of the 2017 Challenge for its entry called ‘UNIFY’.
Places are limited and you can register your interest here.
For questions about the Ambassadors programme, please email global@uva.nl.