Photo By Chad Menegay | Mr. Seong Lee (center), a sponsor for the Army Sustainment University’s...... read more read more
COLONIAL HEIGHTS, Va. — The Army Sustainment University’s International Military Student Office held its annual Sponsorship Recruitment and Recognition Picnic Aug. 14 at White Bank Park.
“The involvement of sponsors with our international students is huge and important to our success,” said Col. Steve A. Erickson, the Army Sustainment University commandant.
IMSO is currently made up of 93 students representing 46 different countries and offers three types of sponsorship for its international military students: social, academic and international.
“We don’t have enough academic and social sponsors; that’s the bottom line,” Erickson said.
Since IMSO works to have three sponsor roles assigned to every student, one can imagine how great the need is for volunteers. So, they actively recruit sponsors both within the installation and without from neighboring communities.
They also recruit within the classroom for student-to-student sponsors.
For example, U.S. Army Capt. Taylor Jenkins, a Logistics Captains Career Course student at ASU, sponsors Congolese Army Capt. Germain Mwakasu Kambaj, also a student in the course.
“The first day, they asked in the classroom who would like to be a sponsor, so he volunteered and started helping me,” Kambaj said. “We have a good relationship. He helps me in school because the most difficulty that international students are having is language.”
The sponsorship program is also important for students arriving in a new country to help with adjusting to a new culture, Kambaj said.
“That’s what we do; we’re all about helping out each other,” Erickson said.
The sponsorship event featured an opportunity for IMSO community members to bond over food, music, craft and sport: barbecue, Italian ice, a DJ, caricature art, a cake cutting ceremony, volleyball, soccer, face painting, balloons and cornhole.
The leadership team presented certificates of appreciation to social sponsors and academic sponsors.
The certificates read, “in appreciation for your outstanding dedication and participation in fostering international understanding and world peace, you are hereby officially recognized and proclaimed an official goodwill ambassador at the Army Sustainment University-International Military Student Office.”
As goodwill ambassadors, sponsors can help international students better understand the American lifestyle and culture.
“Coming together as a community, as partners, as students under the same university, it creates so much more than you can imagine,” Erickson said. “It helps us understand each other on a personal level. It helps us understand our countries, our cultures. It helps us understand how we can interact to be more interoperable—both (heaven forbid) on the battlefield but in everyday life.”
To learn more about the IMSO sponsorship program or to volunteer as a social sponsor, call the ASU IMSO at 804-821-7131.
| Date Taken: | 08.16.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 08.16.2024 09:20 |
| Story ID: | 478805 |
| Location: | COLONIAL HEIGHTS, VIRGINIA, US |
| Web Views: | 24 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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