Students can find God, games and gezelligheid at Ifes weekly meetings The Ifes (International Fellowship of Evangelical Students) is an organization with branches all around the world. “At Ifes-Delft, we try to promote cooperation between students of different cultures to make them feel at home here”, says Hendrik Jan Riezebos, one of Ifes’s local leaders.
“So once every month we organise Intercultural Evenings which consist of a free meal followed by interactive sessions. These sessions can be anything from just watching a movie together, a fun quiz game or lively presentation to simply enjoying a nice evening of games and gezelligheid – which is the Dutch word for having a good time.”
Intercultural Evenings (ICEs) strive to promote friendship between people from different cultures, including between Dutch students and internationals, which Riezebos says is an issue that is occasionally raised, as ‘the Dutch are quite famous for being reserved’.
For those students who have moved from their home countries to study faraway, Ifes tries to create a certain ‘home away from home’ feeling in what is often a painful and lonely experience. “We try to bridge the gap between a person’s expectations and experiences”, Riezebos says.
There is of course also a Christian angle to Ifes efforts. Riezebos: “We respect different cultures and warmly welcome all international students. We try to learn from each other to expand our minds and be wiser, and if someone has questions about Christianity, then of course we’re willing to tell them more about it, because we’re a Christian organization.”
Thus far Ifes has hosted nine intercultural ICE evenings, including one on 20 August, when they welcomed many new international TU Delft students. “The hall for the ICEs usually opens at 18:00, then dinner starting at 18:30, and then we see what happens next – you’ll get a different event at each meeting”, Riezebos says. “Everyone’s welcome and you don’t have to sign up beforehand.”
Ifes meetings are held at Oude Delft 9. Students interested in attending the meals/meetings should send an email to ifes-delft@ oli.tudelft.nl. Ifes will then include you on its mailing list and send updates about upcoming events.
Dr. Raluca Marin-Perianu is the winner of the 2009 Christiaan Huygens Prize for information and communication technology. The 31-year-old researcher, originally from Romania, impressed the jury with her thesis on small, intelligent sensors that are capable of communicating with each other wirelessly. For winning the award, she received a bronze statuette and check for 10,000 euro. Marin-Perianu studied computer science at the University of Bucharest, before going on to conduct doctoral research in dynamic wireless sensor networks at the University of Twente, from 2004-2008. Marin-Perianu also has her own spin-off company, Inertia Technology, which aims to further develop ‘wireless sensor networks’ for various applications, such as in the healthcare and security sectors, and also for monitoring bridges. TU Delft’s Professor Koen Langendoen (EEMCS) is especially interested in her research on group behavior: “It creates order from chaos.”
Comments are closed.