For the last few years, Gulf Coast Diplomacy has been honored to host virtual and in-person projects for the United Kingdom with the International Visitor Leadership Program titled Youth Empowerment and Civic Activism. To introduce a recent in-person group to locals, we first brought them to a community coffee where they could meet with community...
When International Visitor Leadership Program participants come to Northwest Florida, they explore the objectives in their itineraries through a series of meetings and workshops. They also experience our local culture through time with individuals, ticketed events, and unstructured weekend time. For example, when visitors looking at Developing Entrepreneurship, Start-Ups, and the Technology Sector arrived in...
I am very honored that I got a chance to talk again about my stay in your beautiful city Pensacola, in November 2011, which was provided by the International Visitor Leadership Program – IVLP and in the Project on Inter-Ethnic Cooperation in the United States. In November of 2011 I was representing Serbia’s Greek National...
During the fall of 2021, I was a program facilitator for Gulf Coast Diplomacy's Youth Ambassador program. This program included youth leaders from all over the Americas, including El Salvador, Honduras, Belize, Nicaragua, and the United States. In the new normal of virtual programming, these young leaders brought their enthusiasm and young professionalism in tow....
We at Gulf Coast Diplomacy love to give our visitors volunteer opportunities, especially those that highlight the beauty of the natural environment. Sharon Gincauskas, co-president of Ocean Hour, is always more than willing to meet with our visitors and provide an opportunity to both explore our beaches and walkways and help keep them clean. She...
How do you address political policy formation, public-private partnerships, leadership, and advocacy strategies with visitors from the Kyrgyz Republic participating in an International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP)? In the late winter of 2020, our community did just that through a series of hands-on activities and dynamic meetings for professionals from the Ministry of Education and...
As we prepare to return to in-person programming, we are looking back through our archives at our past exchanges for inspiration. One of our last pre-pandemic project was for two environmentalists from Costa Rica and Ghana who came our way to explore NGO management and strategies and is a great example of how the International...
At the end of February 2020, we welcomed seven visitors on an International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) titled Women as Political and Social Leaders. The exchange participants came from Chad, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan to examine the role of women in the United States government and the community at large and...
Letter from a Youth Ambassador It’s always a pleasure to hear from program alumni. In early 2022, Youth Ambassador Joanna Sánchez, a teenager from Nicaragua, reached out to give us an update. Today is a really important day for me because I made come true a dream I was working very hard to achieve. It...
Five key policies drive the work of the Department of State. Three of these are promoting the advancement of democracy, encouraging economic growth and prosperity, and promoting international understanding of American values and policies. Can one meeting have such a significant impact? Indeed, it can. The combination of these meetings helps our organization assist the...
