Welcome to 2025 and a thank you for 2024

We wish you a good start in the year 2025 and hope, that you had a joyful and relaxed Christmas season. In this small overview, we would like to share our heartfelt gratitude to all our supporters and friends who have supported us throughout 2024 and we want to use the opportunity to give you a sneak peek on projects we successfully did the last year and additionally offer a glimpse of exciting new projects in 2025.

Looking back at 2024, it was a fascinating year for volunteer work with many new members joining us and a new board taking over in June 2024 with Rabisankar Basumatary and Dalyl Hamadou Ali as first and second chair and Dimpi Nilesh Mehta as finance board. We were happy to successfully organise our Intercultural Week 2024 (ICW) as biggest event series throughout the year. Along with this, the campus projects as well as our commitment as Local Erasmus Initiative, part of the SOrCE-network, refugees’ network and Ilmenau Dialog Center continued to run consistently contributing to our values, intercultural understanding and promoting tolerance. All in all, we were able to welcome around 5,000 participants throughout the year in our self-organised events. We want to thank all the volunteers, who put their time and dedication in making the events happen.

Also, we want to thank all the people, who showed their support for a solidary, tolerant and open-minded society. It was good to see so many people sharing these values in Ilmenau and in Germany in the beginning of 2024. This fosters our work and gives us hope.

The following review includes the projects that we undertook for the year and the ones we supported. At the end we would also like to have a short look into the future.
We hope, you enjoy reading. If you have any questions or ideas, feel free to contact us.

Your ISWIs

Intercultural Week ICW 2024

We were happy to successfully organise and host a new project in Ilmenau – the Intercultural week ICW 2024. The project took place from May, 23rd till June, 2nd with the motto “Cat(ch) the world with cultural diversity!” and addressed esp. international students in Ilmenau and Thuringia. In group discussions with more than 60 participants from TU Ilmenau and Thuringia led by around 30 volunteer groupleaders discussed recent topics of internationalisation and life of internationals in Ilmenau and Thuringia. Proposals and hints were collected and reported to the respective institutions. Additionally, a “Fair of possibilities” (career fair) with about 170 participants and a following discussion about the Thuringian labour market supported by the presidium and International Office of TU Ilmenau, ThAFF (Thüringer Agentur für Fachkräftegewinnung) as well as Secretary of State Ms. Dr. Böhler (TMWDDG) brought interesting insights in the Thuringian job market, the requirements for international students and the respective view of international students. Also, during the whole ICW 2024 a diverse cultural programme was successfully organised and offered including an intercultural game night, an intercultural dance night, a sports night, an intercultural movie night, a kitchen run, a chill and arts night, a language lounge and a science rallye. With our intercultural carnival and an intercultural brunch we contributed also to the city festival of Ilmenau. All in all, we could welcome around 1.200 participants to the above mentioned events. We want to again say thank you to all our funders, supporting organisations and the volunteers, among them TU Ilmenau, StuRa TU Ilmenau, House of ressources Thüringen, Studierendenwerk Thüringen, IlSC e.V., KuKo e.V., hsf e.V., hfc e.V., KJR Ilm-Kreis as well as the city of Ilmenau and Ilm-Kreis county.

ISWI 2025 und SOrCE

Preparations for the International Student Week in Ilmenau 2025

We are happy to be able to organise our association's biggest project again in its 17th edition - the International Student Week in Ilmenau (in short: ISWI 2025). It will take place from June, 12th to 21st on the campus of TU Ilmenau. We look forward to welcoming participants from all over the world to Ilmenau to discuss the topic of “Sharing power, giving opportunities, enabling participation” with the motto “Spark the Part(y)cipation”. As it is our biggest project, the preparation needs around 1 year of time. An organizing-group of volunteers was set up during a first preparation weekend in July, 12th to 14th, deciding on the topic and the motto. In the following months a PR-strategy to reach out for participants as well as a content and culture programme were developed and first financial applications were done. In a second preparation weekend from Nov, 29th to Dec, 1st the further proceeding how to choose participants and planning the next steps to implement the culture and content programme for the week were addressed. With our deadline for applications on Dec 15th about 1,200 applications reached us and we look forward for a great ISWI 2025 happening in June.

An dieser Stelle möchten wir uns bereits für die Unterstützung durch Institutionen bedanken, die uns Hilfe, Fördermittel, Tipps und Wissen zur Verfügung gestellt haben und stellen werden oder Unterstützung durch viele ehrenamtliche Helfer*innen leisten. Darunter befinden sich das Thüringer Wirtschaftsministerium (TMWWDG), das Auswärtige Amt, die TU Ilmenau, der StuRa TU Ilmenau, das Haus der Ressourcen Thüringen, das Studierendenwerk Thüringen, die Deutsche Stiftung für Engagement und Ehrenamt, IlSC e.V., KuKo e.V., hsf e.V., hfc e.V., KJR Ilm-Kreis sowie die Stadt Ilmenau und die Landkreise Ilm-Kreis und Saale-Orla-Kreis.

SOrCE

Directly connected with our biggest project is the SOrCE (Students Organizing Conventions Everywhere) Network, which is connecting students' associations from around the world that organize similar projects like the ISWI students’ conference. This year we hosted during the ICW 2024 from May, 30th to June 2th the in-person meeting in Ilmenau with about 16 participants from Serbia, Slovenia, Romania and Norway. We discussed about new developments in the network with more student conferences coming up worldwide. 4 delegates also took part in a second physical meeting from Dec, 2nd to 7th in Belgrade to further refine the structure inside the network. Apart from that several members of the association had the chance to visit some of our partner festivals and conferences this year as delegates, including ISWiB (Belgrad, Serbia), SCIM (Maribor, Slovenia) and ISWinT (Timișoara, Romania).

Campus Projects and LEI-projects

Also in 2024, we were able to organize a lot of projects on the campus of TU Ilmenau and support international students in various ways to make their own cultural events or to get to know their campus and Ilmenau and contribute to the cultural life in Ilmenau. All in all, we could welcome throughout the year around 2750 participants. At that note, we want to thank the volunteers, who made the projects working, but also the funders and supporters for helping us and the international students, among them TU Ilmenau, esp. we4you, StuRa TU Ilmenau, House of ressources Thüringen, Studierendenwerk Thüringen, IlSC e.V., KuKo e.V., hsf e.V. and KJR Ilm-Kreis, dgb-Bildungswerk Thüringen and DAAD. In the following section we present some of our events. Depending on our capacities and the interest of our members in 2025 we will try to continue with them.

Intercultural Nights

In 2024 we were hosting six intercultural nights with groups from Pakistan, Peru, Mexiko, France, Algeria and with Exchange students from Romania, Peru and Indonesia in collaboration with bi-club. The groups were cooking and serving traditional dishes, decorated the club and made a cultural program featuring music, dances, and unique clothing from their region. We were happy to welcome around 100 participants for each night.

Intercultural celebrations

We were also able to support international student groups to celebrate and show festivities from all around the world on the campus of TU Ilmenau. The biggest of these events with about 380 participants was the Eid Al-fitr celebrated on 12th of April in Audimax of TU Ilmenau. But also smaller gatherings like Masleniza (March, 13th), Baba Marta (March, 2nd) and our small Easter program (March, 30th) were well received by the participants.

ISWI game nights

Getting students together and getting to know each other by playing games, we again organised several game nights. Especially new students took part and our game masters could teach a lot of different games – from well-known to unique.

ISWI sports’ afternoon

Following our experience from ICW, where the sports night was well received, we tried out this new format of a low barrier sports’ afternoon providing free space for different sports like table tennis, badminton, basket- and volleyball, but also promoted international games and included a presentation about not so well-known sports. With 78 participants joining, we hope to continue in 2025. Special thanks to the university sport’s centre, who supported us a lot.

LEI-events

As LEI (Local Erasmus Initiative) in Ilmenau we are organizing events that help together with the International Office of TU Ilmenau to prepare outgoing Erasmus students for their exchange semester. Next to a LEI-party in January and a public viewing of this year's Eurovision Song Contest in Sweden in May as well as a kitchen run and a game night to get old and new Erasmus-students together and advertise the Erasmus programme, we organised two Wanderlust lectures, where students could inform about the experience of outgoers and travelling. Apart from that we contributed to the special topic of the elections to the European Parliament 2024 with a lecture of “Understanding Europe!” in collaboration with Europe direct. Also, we took part at the Entdecke die Welt-Tag (May, 29th) and the sustainability days in June and October at TU Ilmenau.

Language Meetings

An essential basis for enabling mutual understanding is to speak a common language. To provide a platform on which people who are currently learning a language can exchange ideas with native speakers of that language, we organize language meetings. We were happy, that we could provide regular meetings for the following languages: English, French, German, Spanish. The Persian language meeting had to stop in June due to a lack of participation. Elsewise the meetings were well received with about 750 participants in total. We hope also to be able to host language meetings in 2025.

International dancing and ISWI music

Music and dance are two ways to bring people together and enable them to express themselves. We were able to offer regularly these two occasions, where people could just join, try things out and get to know each other. The International Dance project offered weekly salsa and bachata dance lessons without pre-knowledge or registration. Some of the participants even were able to contribute to other events on the campus like the dancing bash. The ISWI Music project was going on for the whole year with new people joining and bringing themselves in. Throughout the year, they collaborated on performances at various venues within the university and across the city, e.g. “Miteinander stärken” by house of ressources Thüringen or the culture and food festival by KuKo e.V. The group also regularly participated in jam sessions.

Erstiwoche at TU Ilmenau

Just like last year, we again welcomed first-semester students during winter by supporting the Getting-to know barbecue along with FeM, hsf e.V., ILSC e.V., Bergfest e.V. and bi-Club by organising games, activities and our international buffet, where freshers can get to know the diversity of the campus by tasting snacks and finger food from around the world. Along with it we also had a stall during City Rallye engaging participants in intercultural games.

Profs reading Christmas stories and Colourful Christmas

As last events in 2024 we again organised our traditional Profs reading Christmas stories on Dec, 16th in bc-café to bring the international students into Christmas mood. This time we could welcome Prof. Schaaf and Prof. Gürtzig. Donations were collected this time for white helmets Syria, Red Crescent Sudan and Israel and the occupied territories.

Also, we offered again our colourful Christmas exchange and events programme in cooperation with we4you, so that the international students who stay in Ilmenau do not need to stay alone at home and get to know Christmas traditions. The program was again well received. We were able to send 14 students out of 61 applicants to 5 hosts in and outside Ilmenau. Also, in our Christmas events group we had about 94 participants, of whom several took part in events organised by us like cookie baking, ice skating, potluck, movie and karaoke nights or visiting the churches.

Radio International

In 2024 during the lecture time, we were able to run biweekly our Radio International show in collaboration with radio hsf. Here international students were able to share and talk about their intercultural experiences, their country, culture and music as well as politics.

Refugees network

Also, in 2024 we were able to support refugees in Ilmenau. Regular events included the Soli-Café with language meetings, tutoring and crafting throughout the year as well as tutoring for unaccompanied minors till June, and some excursions. We especially want to thank the KBZ Ilmenau for hosting us in the time, when the community center of the house of ressources Thüringen was under renovation. Also, we want to thank Impact evolution and the volunteers for taking over a big part the counselling and the house of ressources for the rooms and constant support.

IDC - Ilmenau Centre for Dialogue

This year the Ilmenau Dialogue Center (IDC) was supporting ICW 2024 by giving trainings to the groupleader of the event and took part in collaboration events. Due to a big exchange and lack of members, the group is in a phase of restructuring themselves and start over in 2025.