Brief Background The International Center (IC) is a co-educational dormitory specially built by the University of the Philippines
to accommodate its students from all over the world, for the purpose of cultivating better
international understanding
and cultural assimilation. It is a place wherein the students can find a degree of security during a period of
adjustment to a new culture and a new pattern of academic life.
The International Center was built in 1965 as a joint undertaking of the Rockefeller Foundation and the
University of the Philippines. Through the years, the IC has earned for itself a reputation of luxury and
affluence, by providing comparatively more facilities than other residence halls in the campus. To avoid the problem
of food adjustment, the residents may prepare and store their own kind of food in their kitchens.
The IC is composed of three dormitory units, the third of which was constructed in 1978. In all, there are 36 rooms
for two and 16 rooms for three, with separate quarters for males and females. Each room for three has a private
toilet and a bath as well as a kitchenette with stove and refrigerator. Each room for two shares with its adjoining
room a refrigerator, a bath and a toilet. There is a common kitchen and laundry room for each set of rooms for two.
The rooms are furnished with beds, lockers, chairs, tables, desks and an electric fan. The polygonal social
hall, where the residents converge, consists of a receiving area, TV room, reading room and administrative offices.
Meanwhile, the IC Extension basement includes a dining hall, typing and conference rooms, a table tennis area and piano
room. Residents can also play volleyball, soccer, and other outdoor games in its wide lawn.
Since it was established, the IC has been the home of about a thousand students from almost 50 countries all
over the world. While about 80 percent of IC residents come from ASEAN nations and their immediate
neighbors, there have been residents from as far as Czechoslovakia, Guatemala and Nigeria, and from Bhutan and Sudan. The differences of race, creed, and color
become of minute significance, though, as these students share a life together in the International Center, each day
discovering in each other the universal values of truth, justice and brotherly love.
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