Become a mentor!

The UU Welcome Week is the introductory week for international students who are about to start their studies at UU. During the week, they get to know the city, the university and (most importantly) each other.

The week is right before classes start because most international students can only arrive in the Netherlands a few days before their studies start.

The most important task as a mentor is to be a friendly face for the students and the first person they can turn to with all their questions. Even if you do not know all the answers, it helps a lot if someone can Google with you! This is especially so when you have just arrived in a new country and you are overwhelmed by everything you need to arrange.

Mentors are needed on 2 February and 3 February. On 2 February, everyone attends the Opening Show at the Educatorium (room: Megaron). After the show, you will have the chance to meet your mentor group for the first time and have free lunch together in the Marinus Ruppert building! On 3 February, you will lead your group during the "Explore the City" activity as a mentor. We will provide you with a tour route (so you don’t have to know every corner of the city), but as a mentor you are also free to make the route your own. At each stop of the route, you will compete in a series of photo and video challenges for a special prize for your whole group! Plus, you can get a free warm drink along the way. After the Explore the City activity, you can join the workshops with your mentor group, but this is not mandatory (just fun!). See here for the full programme.

As a mentor you join all activities during the Welcome Week for free! There are also some perks, such as the leadership training you can follow, that we will organise especially for mentors. 

Our goal is to have max. 20 students and 2 mentors in each group. The final number depends on the number of mentors we find.

We aim to make the groups as diverse as possible: all students will come from different study backgrounds and we aim to mix up different nationalities.

There are many perks! 

• Meet new people from all over the world 
• Join a week of fun activities
• Gain valuable mentoring and leadership experience (which you can definitely put on your cv!) 
• And of course... the satisfaction of helping people find their way!

In short: the only requirement is that you are available during the week! You do not need to have any previous experience or be the most social person we’ve ever met. There will be a training course focused on all the practical details of the week to prepare you.

The students who arrive are all different, and so are our mentors! The most important thing is that you can be a friendly face and that you are willing to help students with their questions. In most cases, a response like ‘that is a good question, let’s Google it together!’ is all a new student needs to feel welcome and reassured.

You can sign up via this link. We will get back to you with more information once you've signed up!