How much fun, learning, and reflection time is possible in two weeks? Teen participants with the U.S. Department of State’s Youth Ambassadors exchange found out when they traveled to Northwest Florida. For two weeks in January & February 2020, students from Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua plunged into discussions, site visits, cultural activities, and workshops focusing on the themes of the environment, entrepreneurship, and community engagement.
Activities included a visit to Pensacola City Hall and discussion with the council executive, a volunteer opportunity with the Florida Environmental Protection Agency, a workshop with a young entrepreneur, and a popular school visit to Gulf Breeze High School. They examined cross-cultural communication, the importance of recycling, community resources for entrepreneurs, business planning, civic participation, women’s empowerment, and public speaking. They worked on crafting business plans, met with the Powerful Women of the Gulf Coast, and took a field trip to the local materials recycling facility. They explored leadership and participated in several public speaking workshops that built upon each other.
After attending an agenda review session at the Escambia County Board of County Commissioners, the teens held a local government simulation. They then discussed fundraising and budgeting with the president of the Junior Achievement of Northwest Florida.
They applied their newly polished public speaking skills at a visit to a juvenile detention facility and practiced their elevator pitches with representatives from the Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of West Florida. They visited the Waterfront Rescue Mission Thrift Store, volunteered with Ocean Hour alongside two environmentalists from Colombia and Ghana, and met with the founder of a bilingual newspaper promoting inclusion and dialogue in the greater Pensacola area. The itinerary also included a visit to a local grocery and café focused on educational outreach and environmental stewardship and a discussion on mentoring with a student who co-founded a local STEM-focused non-profit.
In addition to skill-building and project-focused activities, there was time for cultural exploration and fun. This included dining at restaurants whose menus represented the diversity of the United States, visiting a local museum to explore how the history of a region shapes its present, and taking a graveyard tour with an archaeologist to highlight African-American history.
The Youth Ambassadors also enjoyed bowling one night, where they met local students participating in the Youth Diplomats program. Near the end of their stay, the Youth Ambassadors thanked their host families with a dinner complete with cards, dances, songs, skits, and poems highlighting the different cultures of their home countries.
To see photos of their time with us, visit this album.
The Youth Ambassadors program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs with funding provided by the U.S. Government. It is administered by World Learning, in partnership with CIED Georgetown University. Georgetown is the partner implementing this exchange and works with partner organizations like Gulf Coast Diplomacy in the United States and abroad.
