An internship with the Gulf Coast Citizen Diplomacy Council allowed me to participate in the building of a cultural bridge between the United States and Mexico through hands-on, active, and stimulating work. During my time with the Jóvenes en Acción program, I established life-long bonds with foreign visitors and met the leaders and entrepreneurs of...
In August, five visitors from Australia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam arrived in Pensacola as part of the International Visitor Leadership Program titled Land Rights: Protecting Communities and their Rights. They met with City Council Executive Don Kraher to discuss the city’s history and environmental issues, and took a site visit to Project Greenshores with...
This summer, five visitors from Haiti arrived in Pensacola as part of an International Visitor Leadership Program titled Youth and Civic Activism. City Council Executive Don Kraher started their project with an overview of Pensacola to help orient them to the area. A volunteer experience at First United Methodist Church was next, and it focused...
The Gulf Coast Citizen Diplomacy Council recently celebrated its tenth anniversary. More than 100 members & supporters came together to mark the occasion along with 19 International Visitor Leadership Program participants from 19 various countries. Celebrants stuffed a memory box full of their perceptions of citizen diplomacy. These are too joyful to keep to ourselves! My...
This June, six visitors from Russia traveled to Pensacola for eight days as part of the Open World Program. Their focus was on women in entrepreneurship. While in Pensacola, they stayed with host families Leigh and Kent DeSantis, Larisa Reyes and Tim Chandler, Wendy and Chris McCullar, JoAnn and Ken Roberts, Faye and Robert Robinson,...
This spring, we received a small group of visitors from Libya who traveled to Pensacola on a U.S. Department of State International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) titled Women in Leadership: Drivers of Political and Social Change. While they were in town, they met with several locals who described the opportunity to interact with them as...
Advancing Gender, Ethnic, and Cultural Minority Rights was the project title for a recent group from France who came to the United States as International Visitor Leadership Program participants. They were in the country on this professional exchange for three weeks, attending meetings and site visits in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Reno, Phoenix, Pensacola, and New...
This spring, 16 visitors from Mexico came to Pensacola on a Police Professionalization Exchange Program for Mexico, a program of the U.S. Department of State Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs which aims to provide professional development and training to 4,000 law enforcement professionals, police officials, and other professionals from Mexico over a...
What does a group looking at volunteerism and civic action explore while in northwest Florida? The answer is A LOT! In the spring, a group of international visitors from Chile, Egypt, Nepal, Palestinian Territories, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and South Africa who were here as participants of the International Visitor Leadership Program, a professional exchange of...
The Gulf Coast Citizen Diplomacy Council selected three charter members of its Youth Diplomats Program to go on a June 2018 trip to Washington, D.C. where they spent two days exploring international exchange, diplomacy, and the U.S. government through a series of meetings and site visits with the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Diplomacy...
