Racine Frank joined us at the Small World Café to share her experience as a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer who evacuated from Ethiopia in March 2020 due to COVID-19. Frank is a graduate of the University of West Florida and a former team member at Gulf Coast Diplomacy. Calling in from her new home in...
Rabi WILSON is currently the Assistant Director, Economic Shocks at the United Kingdom’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). In December 2020, she joined members and supporters at the Small World Café in her previous role as a Senior Portfolio Manager at BEIS where, among other things, she focused on policy and culture,...
How much fun, learning, and reflection time is possible in a two-week period? Teen participants with the U.S. Department of State’s Youth Ambassadors Central America project 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,...
International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) alumna Fitore MISINI was our honored guest at a Small World Café focused on Kosovo. MISINI is a program assistant at the American Corner of the National Library Kosova and came to Pensacola in April 2019 on an IVLP focused on civic engagement for high schoolers. That in-person project was...
Now is the time to think about post-pandemic travel. To help inspire the planning, Þuríður H. Aradóttir BRAUN of Iceland joined the Small World Café. BRAUN visited Northwest Florida in 2009 on a U.S. Department of State International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) focused on parks, biodiversity, and ecotourism management along with colleagues from Israel, Kenya,...
For this Small World Café, we were joined by Gulf Coast Diplomacy’s very own Bruno BARROS who was our office’s first intern from the University of West Florida (UWF). BARROS has worked in the international sector since his graduation from UWF and in the summer of 2020 was working for Safmarine in Angola. During the...
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...
