This section is for international tertiary students. Teachers can find information for schools here

Want to be a cultural superhero?

Join Building Global Communities as a global role model for New Zealand school students!

Share your culture in fun workshops for kids as a volunteer for Building Global Communities, where students bring their culture into classrooms to help grow global citizens.

Building Global Communities brings tertiary students from North Asia, South East Asia and Latin America into New Zealand’s classrooms to build inter-cultural understanding among children aged 8 to 12.

You will use your knowledge and creativity to co-design workshops that teach children about your culture. This is a great opportunity to learn about New Zealand’s school system, practice facilitation skills, and build cultural understanding.

Building Global Communities is one of the national education programmes delivered by the Centres of Asia Pacific Excellence which aim to enhance New Zealand’s engagement and cultural understanding with the Asia-Pacific region.

Why join Building Global Communities?

• A great opportunity to help young people in New Zealand understand your culture
• Demonstrate your abilities such as creativity and working with young people, and show your enthusiasm for building cross-cultural understanding
• Learn about New Zealand’s school system and build valuable career skills such as facilitation and engagement
• Network with other students and Asia-Pacific experts

What’s involved for you

• We know you are busy students and we value your time – we will use it wisely!
• You will participate in some short online training and then one or two sessions to develop the workshops. To do this you will use resources provided by the CAPEs, as well as your own skills, experience and creativity. You will the work in small groups to refine your workshop and deliver it in one or more classrooms.
• Potentially you might travel around your region to attend a rural school (at no cost to you)

How to join

Apply here. The application page will ask a few questions about you and what you can bring to the programme. The main requirements for the role are that you are from or have deep experience of an Asia-Pacific country and have passion, creativity, an ability to engage young people, and a desire to build cultural understanding and capability!

More information:

If you would like to ask some questions, email [email protected]