Duyi Li admits her freshman year at University of Oregon was difficult as an international student.

Li, an education major from Shandong province East China, joined the peer mentor program to help new freshmen avoid the same situation as her.

“I want to be the person that new international students can rely on,” Li said. “To support and help them.”

This year, over 700 new international students arrived on campus, according to preliminary numbers from UO Enrollment Management.

Those students are in a new country with people who don’t speak their native language. Understanding the need for extra help, International Student Advisor Robyn Carter stepped up and took charge of a new peer mentor program for international students.

The Peer Mentor Program, the first of its kind operated by International Students and Scholar Services, focusing on the freshmen population. The logo is the symbolic image of a duck formation, with the ducks in front as the leaders helping their mentees, and eventually their mentees will take turn and lead a new generation of students.

Together with 27 students who are both domestic and international students with experience in living and learning abroad, Carter put the program together in less than three weeks and attracted around 100 new international freshmen at the first meeting.

“We want students to be successful academically, but it is also very important for them in order to academically be successful that they also be connected to the community and feel comfortable and happy and healthy, and they know where to go to get their questions answered,” Carter said.

Rajan Patel, a senior majoring in international studies and minoring in Japanese, is an Oregonian who lived in Tokyo for one year.

“As a study abroad student myself last year, I thought it’s really cool to have a connection to the university as soon as you get there,” Patel said. “I want to be that connection for people. I want to feel useful to the school at least, to do something more than just going to school.”

These mentors play a very important role because they are acting as friends and resources to these students, like big brothers and sisters, Carter said.

Each has around five people they mentor. Mentors meet with their students two to five hours a week through mainly text, email or in person to answer questions the students may have. Every two weeks, all of the groups have a mandatory meeting to catch up and discuss a new topic.

“First week topics will be campus and community resources. We find that new students who drop out of school become depressed or do worse in their studies because they feel like they don’t have a community,” Carter said. “They don’t have the connection with resources on campus.”

With the background of working with students globally in the past, Carter has a drive in developing students’ leadership and youth involvement as well as learning constantly from them.

“I make sure every program I run is student-led,” Carter said. “They have most of the ideas. I’m  there to make sure things happen, organize and keep everyone motivated, but the mentors are the ones who are developing the program. I think it needs to be way more youth involvement in society in general. I prefer working together with students, rather than being a boss.”