HUB Holland

Joost van Dijck during the pub-crawl. Photo | Rien Meulman

Joost van Dijck is the initiator of HUB Holland. With this club of enthusiastic volunteers he wants to give expats in Eindhoven a place where they can stop feeling like guests. “It has to be a large living-room, a place where they can feel at home.”

In fact it is purely by coincidence that Joost van Dijck is now fully devoting himself to the setup of a place for expats. “I rent out apartments and had an Australian tenant. We became close friends and it is through him that I found out how difficult things really are for expats in Eindhoven. That’s what started it.”

“I have thought about it for a long time and finally decided to launch something. I started with a brainstorming night involving several enthusiastic people I know. The idea was raised to create a large living-room. As an expat you are treated as a guest wherever you come, when you go into a café for a drink or when you do your daily shopping. In many cases expats don’t speak the language, so they get treated differently. In the living-room as we see it, you are not a guest, for a change. We are going about it on a large scale, with an executive board and five working parties. Everything is ready to go. We just have to wait now until we find a suitable space, and then we can get cracking.” In addition to the living-room, the HUB wants to use the same location to equip a number of rooms that may be used for activities. Think of rehearsal and performance rooms for music, dance, lectures and courses.

Anything organized by the HUB is carried out by volunteers. Eindhoven inhabitants who have traveled themselves and would like to resume contact with other cultures again in their own city. Or expats who would like to get involved with this idea. “In a way, it is the TU/e’s common room (in the Bunker, ed.) on a large scale. Apart from the living-room, the HUB is already organizing lots of activities. For example, together with ‘Number42’ it came up with the idea for an English- language quiz night, which now takes place every Thursday night at the Carrousel, and last Saturday there was a pub-crawl (see photo).” (HB)

Via the Facebook page ‘The Hub Holland for Expats’ you can keep informed about all the activities and you can take part in a survey, so that the HUB gets more insight into the desires and needs of expats.