World Echos Board Game Night
With the room buzzing with accents from around the world you might have to strain a bit to understand everyone, but the sound of laughter is universal. World Echos is a student organization that strives to provide an opportunity to interact with a variety of cultures at UNT.
On board games night Rummikub, poker and Scrabble start off the night after a round of chocolate cookies. The members greeted each other like old friends and small groups quickly formed to start games after a short meeting.
Camila Valdiviezo, former UNT student and former vice president, is continuing to help out with events. She has been involved with World Echos for about 2 1/2 years so far. She got interested in the organization because it was not country based, but had a more international focus.
World Echos mainly does social events with some academic events. Events that the organization has done include cooking classes, indian dancing parties, camping trips and movie nights, Valdiviezo said.
The organization currently has about 300 members with 30 to 60 people showing up for a single event, said Carmen Banea, computer science graduate student and president of World Echos.
Banea helped found World Echos in 2001 when she and her sister found that most of the organizations on campus were more focused on a single group. She, being Romanian herself, wanted to have an organization that would fit the students that had hard times finding other students from their own ethnicities.
With varied types of events held different types of people show up to different events. Most of the advertising is word-of-mouth, and you can easily sign up as a member on the World Echos website. Dues for a semester are $5.
Banea’s goals for the World Echos in the future would be to have more students involved to spread diversity.
“There’s many people who don’t travel so this is the best opportunity they would have to see how varied the world is,” Banea said.
Marcus Potter, geography junior, decided to show up and check out board game night after receiving an email about the event. He signed up on the World Echos website and the board game was his first event to attend.
“I like gaming,” Potter said. “I got on Facebook and noticed they had like 273 members.”
Nice story. Glad you included the video. More links would have been useful.