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“Making the world a better place” sounds great and I think the people who live and come to the Cosmopolitan Club have done that already since a long time. It does not seem so apparent that the world is getting any better just because we are simply here. Unfortunately, the world news is still full of never-ending wars, human rights violations, and a lot of people suffering. But I still think we make a tremendous difference in the world because individuals shape the world and we at Cosmo attract a lot of individuals who can make a positive impact. Every Thursday during our coffee hours we celebrate and live international understanding and community. People from all over the world learn from each other, enjoy our warm hospitality, feel at home, and simply have a good time. Everybody is welcome and the ever-present cultural variety makes, for many students, the coffee hour on Thursday the most exciting day of the week. As the whole international community in Champaign-Urbana comes together in our house this is also the place to make plans for the rest of the weekend and continue the international experience. At Cosmo, cultural diversity is the starting point for new friendships—and I believe that many of them last for a lifetime. Cultural diversity makes it even clearer that every human being can be perfectly happy when he/she feels accepted and needed. What Internationalism is to the nations of the world, Cosmopolitanism is to individuals who make up the nations. I would love to see more often that nations who have a conflict with each other could work out a way of understanding and accepting each other in a similar way as we do. I would wish that they could learn from the individuals who come to our coffee hours. I know that the world is not that simple but I also know that very often individuals make the difference for a better world. Most international students studying here at UIUC are the brightest and most educated students in their home countries. They love to face the challenge to study abroad but need to be also very brave to leave their friends and loved ones at home in order to start studying in a completely new environment. Many international students get stronger and develop a great feel for the world as a whole while they are here. To arrive in the United States is a great adventure and to find a place where one can make new friends and feel at home is probably one of the most important things upon arrival. At Cosmopolitan Club we can provide this place. Of course not every international student can live in our house simply because of space limitations but we always try our best to support international students with a warm home during our coffee hours. To feel at home is a feeling uniquely shared among every Human. If the students go home after they have finished their degree or their time abroad they will have a head full of wonderful memories about the coffee hours and positive impressions about the international community here in Champaign-Urbana. They will not understand how people can have prejudices or be intolerant against different cultures, and even more, they will do something against it. They know that the world is a small place and they will see the Cosmopolitan Club as a small representation of the world as a whole. I know that many individuals who have attended coffee hours in the past hundred years have made the world a better place. It is not impossible that future world leaders love to attend our coffee hours every Thursday we just do not know yet how our lives will develop in the future. But we already know now that we lay the foundation for “Making the world a better place” by simply having such a good time with each other.
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