Duino is once again bustling and alive with the cheerfulness of our students, among which a very special first year student from Greece. Seventeen-year-old Iliana is the first beneficiary of the Booking.com scholarship and she is of Albanian origin.
Booking.com hardly needs introducing, renown as it is for being the top website for online booking of hotels and B&Bs in 224 countries and territories via a website available in more than 40 languages. Its international outlook therefore made it a natural partner for UWC Adriatic and since 2015 the College website features a specific link enabling you to use Booking.com’s reservation service while making a donation to UWC Adriatic at no further cost.
Iliana, is the fortunate first student, augurably in a line of many to come, to benefit from this amazing opportunity. “Coming as I do from a family of Albanian immigrants in Greece I know what racism is all about and I know it can be defeated only if different cultures and nationalities really get to know one another from close up”, she states, explaining why she is so thrilled with having been selected for a UWC Booking.com scholarship. “I believe that education and culture are the best way forward for anyone with a disadvantaged family or ethnic background and I intend to make the most of this opportunity that Booking.com has generously offered me.
Booking.com also shares another relevant value with the College: belief that big changes can best be brought about by taking small steps one at a time. This is a principle that lies at the core of Booking.com’s corporate philosophy and that it held onto fast as it developed from a small Dutch business set up in 1996 into an highly successful company purchased only ten years later by the multinational travel Priceline Group.
Now that Iliana is in Duino, along with her fellow 183 students, she is embarking on her own personal journey of self-discovery whilst at the same time reaching out to new cultures she may not have even heard of before.
You too can support this scholarship initiative at no cost by doing something as simple and as making a hotel reservation here.
