Twenty six young men and women, along with five young adult mentors, from Paraguay and Uruguay spent the last three and half weeks in the US as part of a State Department funded and AMIGOS managed program called the South American Youth Ambassadors. The program had an impact on several distinct levels. You could have an interesting argument on where the program had the most important influence or impact. Based on what I saw, the levels of impact were personal, organizational (what this means to AMIGOS) and finally on a broad political/economic level.
On the personal level one young man from Uruguay literally grabbed me and said that his two main goals for participation; increased skills on civic engagement and knowledge of a different culture, were more than met. I asked a group of Youth Ambassadors what was the most unexpected or unanticipated experience that they had in the U.S. With a bit of an emotional edge, one young woman said it was the love and hospitality that she experienced with her host family. All of the youth nodded in agreement. One Youth Ambassador spoke of how touched he was by the fact that his host Mom had postponed knee surgery in order to accommodate the program’s schedule. One element of our culture was captured by an Ambassador who said that Americans get up “early, early, early”.
The leadership training and civic engagement in the Bay Area focused on similar themes as the community based initiatives that the Ambassadors would be implementing back in their home countries. The Ambassadors visited a variety of organizations in San Francisco but Glide stood out in their minds since it embraced and celebrated human dignity in the face of the challenges of drug addiction and homelessness. No doubt the Ambassadors benefited from the passion, knowledge and expertise they saw from those people and organizations who are building a more civil society in the U.S. Ambassadors told me that they now get what “service learning” means. These will be very important skills as they develop their projects to reduce traffic fatalities (the #1 killer of teens in Paraguay), develop cultural centers or after school programs.
We have learned at AMIGOS that youth leadership is best fostered in a supported but challenging environment. Anyone is challenged when immersed in a different culture. The Youth Ambassadors are no exception, however host families provided a cultural safety net which allowed the youth to explore with confidence and safety. These young people were struggling with how to improve their communities. The context however was unrealized potential and what is right rather than simply a deficit perspective where everything is wrong.
During an evening de-briefing in Washington D.C., we shared a video that captured the early history of AMIGOS in 1965 where young volunteers were providing vaccinations to hundreds of thousands of individuals in Honduras. The historic significance of now developing the leadership capacity of Latin American youth here in the U.S. was realized by the whole group. Although we have expanded the involvement of Latin American youth substantially, AMIGOS should be proud of the fact that we have full alumni from throughout the Americas.
The world is becoming both a bigger and smaller place. My own familiarity with the spirit, commitment and passion of 26 Youth Ambassadors, plus their Mentors, renews my belief that the world is becoming a better place. These young men and women have the skills and passion to do some really incredible things in their communities and the Americas.
