On the 15th of March Proakatemia had its own cultural event organized by the international relations team (IRT) and the first-year students’ company TRAME. The idea of ​​​​this event was to bring the community closer by embracing the culture it holds in its diversity. The need for such an initiative came from an understanding that students kept talking about how diverse the community was, but did not have a day to celebrate their cultural differences.

Such initiative is very powerful not only for the community but also for the businesses and their business relations, as this allows one to experience different cultural norms and traditions, and, therefore, be more aware of how to work with people influenced by their origin. Moreover, in such informal cultural events, it is possible easily to make new connections and get inspiration for new project ideas. I, for instance, received an invitation to a coffee, exchanged my numbers with new visitors and got an invitation to meet after, and agreed to show my home country to an enthusiast from the community – all of that without even putting much effort as I was more occupied with the event hosting.My friend said that after a post on one participant’s social media they were found by a person from the same country they shared a conversation in a store the week before. Mind you, this was a new concept and the number of participants was only around 30 that day.

This time we said that everyone is welcome to represent their country or region, and the more people would want to show their culture to the community – the better. We had cultural foods and Beverages from Latvia, Austria, Sri-Lanka, Iceland, Asia and Finland… We danced samba and “tūdaliņ tāgadiņ”… Sang karaoke in 4 different languages… searched for an elephant’s eye, and more… And even though most of the activities were organized by TRAME team members, the event was a success and felt like a good start for a new tradition. People were approaching me and saying “next time we should…”, “next time I too…”, and “thank you for our discovery” and by that, I can say that it was something that was very much needed in our community.

Let’s see – hopefully, there will be more cultural events in Proakatemia.

I am very grateful I got to be a part of the organizing team and experience the event in presence. Great evening to remember… 🙂