Do you like exploring new things and discovering information? If so, it's time to have some fun with Gulf Coast Diplomacy and IYLEP! IYLEP is sponsored and funded by the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The U.S. Department of State has provided leadership and educational opportunities to thousands of Iraqi youth since 2007. We have three...
On February 21st, we had our Youth Diplomats monthly meeting via Zoom. We started our meeting as we usually do with a Kahoot on current affairs. Through this fun quiz, all of us were equipped with new knowledge and information on current global news & events. Afterwards, we had an engaging and collaborative discussion on...
On Saturday, January 16th, we had our monthly Youth Diplomats Zoom meeting. We started with a game of Kahoot on current events, and the exciting announcement of the opening of applications for The Experiment Digital 2021. It was an incredible ice breaker, as it opened the room for some discussion and laughter along the way....
Dr. Megan Pratt always makes an effort to meet with international exchange participants, both professionally and also informally as a dinner host or host parent for youth exchanges. She and her family all routinely express their excitement when a new group comes to town. As the founder of the Pensacola MESS (Math, Engineering, Science, and...
For the Small World Café held on September 10, Gulf Coast Diplomacy welcomed two visitors to discuss their work. Dr. Khwaja Mohammed ZIYAUDDIN and Laeeq AHMED KHAN AQIL visited Northwest Florida as participants of an International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) in 2019. Their U.S. Department of State project was coordinated at the national level by...
Our August focus for the café was on the importance of building local identity, and Taras REPYTSKYI shared how he and his team are creating a sense of community in the Sykhivskyi District of Lviv in Ukraine. During the meeting, REPYTSKY shared how his neighborhood has changed in post-communist Ukraine and spoke of the importance...
On January 12th, 2021, Gulf Coast Diplomacy hosted the first Small World Cafe of the new year with guest speakers, Shana Inofuentes and Monica Flores, of The Quechua Project. The two co-founders shared the group’s goal of reinvigorating the endangered Quechua language by expanding its community of speakers to younger generations. As the official language...
In early May 2020, Gulf Coast Diplomacy held its third Small World Café. The speaker for the event was Greece’s own Spyros KOUVELIS who visited Northwest Florida in 2009 on one of our organization’s first projects. KOUVELIS was delighted to “return” to the community and was not shy in pointing out his Certificate of Honorary...
When an International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) or Open World project has teaching STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), non-profit management, best practices in education, or entrepreneurship as an objective, Basil Kuloba, the executive director of INERTIA Education Programs, Inc., makes time in his calendar to share his experiences with exchange participants. Kuloba co-founded INERTIA...
For four exciting days in November 2019, Gulf Coast Diplomacy hosted a group of nine professionals from Austria, Costa Rica, Fiji, Mongolia, Namibia, Sweden, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, and the United Arab Emirates. The U.S. Department of State invited these visitors to participate in an International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) which was arranged at the national level...
