Rare International Students Everywhere (RISE), co-founded by President Candice Lu `26 and Treasurer Natalie Ng `27, is a student organization that represents and strives to create a welcoming community for Rare Birds, global nomads and other students who don’t quite feel domestic.
A ‘rare bird’ is an Office of International Student Affairs (OISA)-coined term to refer to an international student at Grinnell with very few national compatriots.
“We thought that rare birds should have their own club,” said Lu, “and we wanted to incorporate people from cultures that don’t feel represented.”
Lu hosted the Global Kitchen-funded event “Beans Around the World” about a year ago, aimed at exploring the global cultural significance of beans and bringing students of different backgrounds together. Students contributed a variety of bean-centered dishes, desserts, drinks and appetizers from their home countries of Ecuador, Poland, Singapore and many more.
As the event unfolded, Lu and Ng felt students from underrepresented national identities needed a platform to share their cultures and access funding. Rare International Students Everywhere (RISE) was founded at the beginning of the spring 2024 semester as an answer to that problem.
“There are big international student organizations like CSA [Chinese Student Association], or KSA [Korean Student Association] or BRASA [Brazilian Student Association],” Lu said, “but there’s a lot of international students from countries with fewer representatives. We wanted to center and spotlight these students.”
RISE emerged from an urge to explore the differences in culture that are difficult to find in Grinnell and difficult to represent in their minutiae through larger international organizations.
“We wanted to talk about those little bumps in our cultures,” said Akira Keene Teotrakool `28. “There’s comfort in speaking on these topics when you’re surrounded by people who relate to the lack of representation.”
“We wanted to improve how cultural exchange is done,” said Ng. “We want to make sure that our events create an environment where people are curious and want to learn about other cultures.”
A core concern for RISE has been reaching out to the larger student population while adhering to the club’s mission of authentically finding a space for underrepresented national identities.
“We’re a club for rare international students, which already limits the number of people available to us,” said Ng.
“I feel like a lot of international students don’t know what RISE is,” said Rabbani Batra `28, who hopes to create better outreach for the organization.
“I think we would have to give up being very popular or well-known in favor of having a specific audience of people who are actually interested,” Ng said.
“If we’re able to curate a genuine, interested community, then I feel like it’s meaningful that we made this happen,” Teotrakool said.
International Game Night, Valentine’s Day Karaoke and Rice Around the World are some of the events RISE has hosted since its founding.
“We really like food events, we really like opportunities to connect with people through food,” said Teotrakool. But RISE acknowledges that too often the phenomenon of Grinnellians lining up for free food obscures the underlying substance of the event.
“We want people to learn about other cultures through food,” Lu said.
The main RISE event to look forward to this semester is the Spring Social, which Lu describes as a cozy occasion with interesting conversation and food from some of the countries that RISE represents.
Editor’s note: Akira Keene Teotrakool `28 and Natalie Ng `27 are both staffers at The Scarlet & Black. They were not involved in the writing or editing of this story.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the class year of Candice Lu. Updated April 20 at 4:48pm.
