Culture-to-Community Educational Outreach Program

Culture-to-Community aims to increase intercultural understanding and respect for cultural difference throughout Newfoundland and Labrador. It does so by linking Memorial University students of diverse backgrounds with classrooms around the province.

Memorial Students

The Culture-to-Community program links students in the kindergarten to grade 12 school system in Newfoundland and Labrador with international and new immigrant students at Memorial University. Because our student body here at Memorial is so culturally diverse it represents a wealth of information and perspectives from around the world. This program seeks to bring these perspectives into rural schools around the province.

Would you like to visit a rural school to talk about your country, culture, faith, or experience?

We are currently accepting applications from students who would like to volunteer and visit a rural school to do a presentation on some aspect of where they are from. All presentations will be from April 2015 - March 2016.

In particular we are hoping to receive applications from francophone students (from any country) as we have a lot of interest from French language classes.

Please click here for an application to become a volunteer.

K-12 School Information

Culture-to-Community is a program that provides students in the kindergarten to grade 12 school system in Newfoundland and Labrador with access to other cultures through direct, in-person contact with Memorial University students from diverse cultural backgrounds.

Are you a teacher? Do you have curriculum outcomes that we can help with?

Memorial University's new immigrant and international students come from more than 90 countries and have expertise and experience in many areas. One of our student volunteers could travel to your class to talk about their country, culture, faith, or experience with topics of global significance.

The program can help teachers with curriculum outcomes in Social Studies, Language Arts, Music, Religious Education and more. For example, in grade six Social Studies curriculum – Unit Four: Expression of Culture, students learn about African sports, games, and recreational activities. Our African students can visit the classroom and speak about the popular sports and games in each of the regions of Africa.
Your students receive first-hand experience and it’s a great learning opportunity for them!

Our volunteers: We have volunteers from a wide variety of cultural and linguistic backgrounds who are currently receiving training for the program. They are friendly, knowledgeable, and motivated to get out into the schools.

To Apply: We have been receiving and approving school applications as they come in. Although most of our funding has already been allocated schools around the province are encouraged to apply.

Please click here for the school application.

Media

Culture-to-Community is a program that provides students in the kindergarten to grade 12 school system in Newfoundland and Labrador with access to other cultures through direct, in-person contact with Memorial University students from diverse cultural backgrounds. These university students (both international students and new immigrant students) will visit classes primarily in rural areas of the province to talk about their country, culture, faith, or experience with topics of global significance. The program hopes to increase intercultural understanding and respect for cultural difference while introducing international and new immigrant students to areas of the province they may not have had the chance to visit.

For more information please contact:

Zaren Healey White
Educational Outreach Coordinator
Memorial University of Newfoundland
St. John's Campus, St. John's, NL
Tel: (709) 864-7505
Fax: (709) 864-6102
Email: zaren@mun.ca

Thomas Young
Educational Outreach Coordinator
Grenfell Campus
Tel: (709) 639-4313
Fax: (709) 639-2048
E-mail: tyoung@grenfell.mun.ca