VISAS Café at UVA: Creating the World We Want to See

Some evenings, when the world feels heavy, I make my way to a special place on the University of Virginia's (UVA) grounds, and I return to my natural state of hope and positivity. I go to a place where I'm surrounded by students, incredible world changers, who inspire me as I watch them lead, learn, grow, and create, even when it would be easier to disengage. This inspiring space is VISAS Café (Café), a weekly gathering that's part of UVA's Volunteers with International Students, Staff, and Scholars (VISAS) program.

VISAS is a far-reaching initiative to connect the international community with student volunteers and others to practice English, share cultures, and build relationships. The Café is a place for practicing English in a relaxed and social way, but it is also a welcoming environment where people can bring their full selves—curious and questioning, sometimes nervous, but often open.

A Light and Loving Space

Imagine a room where no one is trying to perfect their grammar, only trying to connect. A room where a graduate student from South Korea might sit beside a facilities staff member from El Salvador. These two might sit next to a visiting scholar from Turkey, who is surrounded by undergraduate students from Virginia, Beijing, Tehran, Texas, and coastal North Carolina, all passing snacks and smiling at one another's stories. This is VISAS Café.

Some days at the Café are silly and playful: We've decorated pumpkins, danced salsa, and played a boisterous version of Family Feud that left the room erupting in laughter. Other days are quieter, asking more of the heart. I've sat in a circle discussing songs that made us feel something deeply, sharing lyrics from around the world. I've recognized pieces of my own story in others, even as our backgrounds and perspectives diverged in meaningful ways.

During one Café session, I had the opportunity to bring a personal passion to the group: meditation. The Café conversation moved easily from mindfulness to culture to self-care practices in different countries; I then guided those in the room in a gentle grounding practice to come back to the present moment.

Moments like this remind me that although students come to the Café for English practice, they stay for something deeper: the connection, understanding, and sense of belonging that make this place so special to me.

Each week holds a different kind of magic. There's space for every kind of English—hesitant, poetic, searching, joyful. I've smiled with others as they found the words to express themselves, and I've been inspired by their stories of life, belonging, and exploration. Sometimes, someone finds a single new word and the group cheers.

More Than Conversation Practice

The Café is part of a larger ecosystem of programs offered through the VISAS initiative, which is designed to connect and support international and domestic students through one-on-one language partnerships, support for international teaching assistants, ESL classroom assistance, and English learning opportunities for UVA employees. But for many, VISAS Café is where the community truly comes alive. It offers something rare: connection without pressure, language learning without shame, and cultural exchange without hierarchy.

A Place of Possibility

For the international members of the UVA community, the Café can be a lifeline. It's a place to meet friends, learn about local customs, and feel a sense of belonging that can be difficult to find in a new country. For students whose first language is English, it serves as a weekly reminder that the world is far more interesting and expansive than a single perspective could capture or speak to.

Week after week, I watch students reach across languages, accents, and uncertainty. They ask questions that matter.

What does home mean to you? What surprises you about life here? What do you miss? What helps you feel calm? What do you hope for?

And somehow, in that small corner of our university, the world feels less divided and more alive with possibility.

Lessons for International Educators

For those of us in the field, VISAS Café offers a model worth celebrating.

• Language learning doesn't have to be clinical. It can be playful, embodied, musical, and communal.
• Students flourish when they can bring their full selves. Students need to be able to express not only their academic selves, but also their hopeful, tired, silly, overwhelmed, and curious selves.
• Cross-cultural learning deepens when shared through lived experience, not only formal instruction. When people share stories, food, laughter, and moments of vulnerability, they build understanding that no textbook can replicate.

An Invitation

If you walk by UVA's New Cabell Hall some evening and hear laughter down the hallway, it might be us: a group of people from all over the world who are learning how to speak to one another, not perfectly, but generously.

If international education is about building a brighter future, VISAS Café can be where that future begins. •

Beth Rogers-Witte is a program coordinator at the University of Virginia.