Washington World Fellowship
I aspire to be a catalyst, one who sparks change in our world through public service and youth empowerment. As such, I wanted to organize a project that addressed systemic issues within my community and in our world. I knew there was a program called the Washington World Fellows within my state that historically provided students with an educational, leadership development, and foreign exchange experience, but was dormant during the pandemic; I sought to revive the program as a result.
My project was implemented in both Washington State (USA) and in the town of Viana, Spain. I executed it by working with secondary schools across Washington to identify high-achieving disadvantaged students, community stakeholders and the Washington Legislature for funding, and Viana to establish a formal site for the foreign exchange component. Working with the town of Viana, we identified various service projects, such as food drives, that the students would participate in to benefit the town.
Directly, 45 students benefited from the program. This consisted of 15 students who were selected during the 2021-2022 academic year to participate in the international exchange component in the Summer of 2022 and 30 students from 2019-2021 who participated in the program virtually (due to COVID-19) to provide them with educational mentorship and leadership development in preparation for college. Indirectly, the service projects conducted in the town of Viana benefited the 4,000 residents.
Through this project, I learned how to apply Sustainable Development Goals and the various WOSM initiatives in a real world context. Furthermore, I learned effective project management skills and improved my intercultural and intergenerational collaboration skills.
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