OWee profile: DISS embraces diversity

“As far as I know, a few of the international student associations are taking part in OWee this year. In years past, the Introduction Programme was mainly for the international associations and OWee was more focused on the Dutch associations.

For DISS, we want our outreach to be for the Dutch students as well because our main goal is to try and connect Dutch and international students so we have a good mixture of all the international backgrounds. That’s one of the main reasons we wanted to take part in OWee, so that we can reach out to the Dutch students.

OWee has both online and offline platforms this year. For the online platform, each association has a page and we get to promote our student organisation, write about our activities and tell people what we are all about. Unfortunately, we will not be able to be part of any live interactive sessions, but we do have a presence on an online platform where you will get a lot of info about DISS. We will be taking part in the offline days. There are seven days where each day a different batch of students will be able to attend the information market.

‘We have gotten much fewer responses’

We have had problems with the current Covid conditions for sure. We have already put out flyers to recruit new members and a new board as well, but we have gotten much fewer responses compared to last year. So OWee will be one of the key opportunities for us to connect with a larger crowd and tell them about DISS.

I would like to say that DISS is an international student organisation that caters to all international students. There are lot of other associations, but they mostly represent just one country. Our aim is to address all of the international students in Delft. We want to try and bridge the gap between all internationals, including Dutch students, so that they might feel a little bit of home away from home.

It’s quite hard to come into a new country and settle in, so we try to make that a little easier. We are involved from your arrival through all of the activities throughout the academic year. We even help pick you up from the train station, help with housing, and organise both social and career events throughout the year.

I have been the president for the 2019/2020 term, so my time will be coming to an end this September. I think people should join DISS as members or be on the board. It’s a great opportunity because you get to meet a lot of different people from across the globe and we at DISS believe in embracing diversity.”

• Also read our previous profile: The adaptability of the OWee board

Heather Montague / Freelance writer