Nurturing Diversity, Inspiring Initiatives

April 22, 2024

UWC Maastricht is a place where Vasiliki really feels at home and being here opened many paths for her future, in terms of further education.

Vasiliki, from Cyprus, never thought she could experience something like UWC, but she is very grateful to have the opportunity to learn so much with people from different parts of the world, living with different cultures and backgrounds. Because of her learning process, she decided to create something to give back to this community.

Taking initiative

Ever since being at UWC Maastricht, Vasiliki knows that education is a means for a lot of things to happen and a seed for change. Together with a few of her peers, Vasiliki set up the SPARK initiative. It stands for Social Progress Awareness and Racial Knowledge. Together, they want to address problems that the UWC community and the city of Maastricht faces, especially because it is such an international community. They identified that there are problems surrounding racism and designed workshops to talk about this.

The workshops are given by SPARK at UWC Maastricht, as well as other schools in Maastricht. The goal is that this creates a space where students can learn and understand from each other. Vasiliki is really proud of this initiative, “this is something that should happen continuously and I am glad we were able to make this happen.”

Culture and Community

Another activity Vasiliki is really proud of, is being one of the floor representatives at her residence hall. Together with another student, she enjoys decorating the room to make everyone feel at home and build the community.

Moreover, Vasiliki, together with her friend group, wants to share their culture with each other and decided to cook meals from their country, put on some music and talk. This way, they bond more through each others’ culture. For now, Vasiliki spends the rest of her time with her friends, before the school is over!