Friday marked the kick-off for this year’s Pioneer to Pioneer Partnership Program (P2P), which connects American students with international students enrolled at DU.

About 150 undergraduate and graduate students attended and signed up to participate in the program this quarter. The  students were paired off or placed in small groups according to their different backgrounds.

The program was implemented during spring quarter 2011.

The program held two meetings last spring quarter before petering out due to poor promotion and starting during a very busy time of year for students, according to Daniel Mason, one of the student leaders of P2P. During fall quarter, however, the student-led program started early as a collaboration between USG, the International Service Organization (ISO) and International Student Services (ISS).

“[During this] first quarter [we]will be considered a pilot program to see what we like and what we need to fix, and we’ll go full-blast [in the winter] quarter,” said Mason.

Participants can expect to attend two large group meetings and three to five group events every quarter. This quarter, P2P is planning a hockey night for all participants and an educational piece on homecoming for international students unfamiliar with the tradition. The rest of the program will vary from student to student. Paired students will receive emails with suggestions on topics for discussion and things to do, including a “passport” with a list of activities, such as attending an event at the Newman Center. The amount of flexibility gives students with difficult schedules the opportunity to be a part of the program.

The main purpose of P2P is to build bridges by creating conversation and communication between student groups, said Mason.

“We have several goals,” he said. “We want to increase interaction between domestic and international students and increase internationalization on campus, because the number of international students at DU is growing every year.”

According to student leader Diane Lian Duan, P2P also hopes to break down language and cultural barriers that arise between international and domestic students.

“International students can be shy and more comfortable hanging out with their own group, so we want to get them more involved on campus,” said Duan.

Current participants in the program have already been paired, but those students who still wish to join P2P will be able to do so next quarter. The program hopes to bring in more students as the year goes on, according to Mason.