Two SFU students are being recognized for their contribution to international education. Mubanga Ngosa and Danish Soomro, former Fraser International College (FIC) students, who are now studying at SFU, are being awarded the Elizabeth Paterson Award for international Student Leadership in International Education by Canadian Bureau of International Education.

The award is given to an international student or student group who contributes in a positive way to the internationalization of education. They were nominated by SFU’s FIC for their work co-managing the FIC Peer Education Program and will be traveling to Toronto to receive their award end of this month.

Ngosa is majoring in software systems, while Soomro is a business major. In an interview with The Peak, Mubanga spoke about the elements of their program and how they have come so far.

The Peak: How did the program gain recognition initially? 

Mubanga Ngosa: Initially, the peer education program won the award for best student led program for 2015, a few months ago. We went to Whistler to receive that award and from that I think they recognized that our work was actually doing something fundamental and thus, they awarded the program leaders for student leadership.

P: What is the program about?

MN: Our peer education program is very similar to the Student Learning Commons at SFU. It’s almost the same; they mirror each other to quite some extent. So with the program, what we do is we get students to come in who need academic help with a particular course.

The students who help the other students would have achieved at least an A- in the same course. So it’s just like a study together system. Mostly, we operate by a drop-in system, so students are always welcome. Well, the program has a lot of people. It can have anywhere from 20 to about 100 students volunteering for it in any given semester.

P: How long have you been associated with this program?

MN: We’ve been involved with the program for about two and half years. We were at FIC when we joined the program.

P: What are some other aspects of the program?

MN: The other things that we do a lot is basically trying to make other people comfortable with being intellectual, so as to speak.

You don’t always have to feel pressur[ed] into always constantly studying. It’s more of a fun environment where you can actually learn. One of our associates came up with the word “edutainment,” so it’s like education/entertainment. We try to centre somewhere around this.

P: Has there been any particular learning experience which stands out as a milestone?

MN: Well, the entire process is a learning experience since we are international students who have just come into a new country, settling into a new culture — and we are given this opportunity with responsibility and we are constantly trying to build on that.

To single out a particular event, we had to throw a Halloween themed event at FIC, which was not particularly related to academics, but it was large-scale and we had media coming into the school to cover the event — and that was sort of outside our comfort zone and it helped us to grow as a team.

P: Do you have any particular message for readers?

MN: Be yourself and be confident to stand out. Just have fun with your experiences and hopefully, you’ll get to your destination.