Meeting people - difficult at the moment due to the corona pandemic, but extremely important, especially for international students. Because it is the contact with fellow students, teachers and people in the “new home” that makes a semester abroad or an entire degree abroad so worthwhile. The THM therefore switched its “International Buddy Programme” to a digital format at short notice for the summer semester due to the corona situation. With these experiences we are now entering the winter semester.

The idea behind the buddy programme: teams of newcomers and oldies of different nationalities are put together every semester. Studies and personal interests are taken into account. Newcomers can rely on the experiences of the oldies, get to know the THM, their Department and their place of study. But how can that work digitally? The programme coordinators Robbin C. Bastian and Lawen Oweissi accompanied 224 students in the programme in the past semester - significantly less than usual. Large parts of the semester accompanying programme had to fail with excursions, events, workshops as well as cultural and sporting offers. But what was to be transferred to the digital tackled the team.

For example, foreign language meetings, cultural evenings such as “Around the World in 80 Culinary Minutes” and seminars on starting a career were offered on digital channels. The "Buddy Challenge" was born as a new idea: All teams were motivated to visually present their similarities and experiences and to share them with the other teams. Lara-Christiane Militzer, who was born in Leipzig, also enjoyed it as the oldie and newcomer Bagas Danu Wijaya Marwan from Yogyakarta, who not only study biomedical engineering at the THM , but also share a passion for motorcycles and guitar music.

"Fortunately, the newcomers were already here," says Militzer about the beginning of the Corona semester. So at least most teams were able to meet personally. For some newcomers, their buddy was the only caregiver in Central Hesse, especially in the early phase of pandemic. Social insulation should definitely be avoided. So you got to know each other on the digital channels when cooking or in information rounds for study financing aid-before the summer brought the first private meetings. Lara Militzer had long since explored Yogyakarta: Bagas Marwan had invited her and others to a digital city tour through his hometown. At the same time, it was studied - digitally - and the Elective module "Intercultural Competence and Encounters" was also documented. In it, the participating teamwork in culturally heterogeneous groups and a cultural -sensitive attitude learn.

This will continue to be done online in the soon-to-be-started winter semester: The "International Buddy Programme" will remain digitally anchored with - if desired - personal meetings of the two-person teams. New to the offer is the now also digital "Buddy Café" on Friday afternoons via the video platform Zoom and also the integration of all those new THMstudents who are currently unable to leave their home countries due to the pandemic. They should not only use the university's digital learning opportunities, but also get to know Central Hesse from afar at an early stage. In the hope of being able to welcome them to the THM very soon and to be able to provide them with an experienced buddy.

Information about the International Buddy Programme is available here.