Sessions
IDEA: Peer-to-Peer Mentoring for Diversity and Inclusion (Youth Summit) at the Youth Summit
Signe Knutson
iEARN-USA
Signe Knutson
Signe is a Program Coordinator for the National Security Language Initiative for Youth program at iEARN-USA.
Diogene Artiles
NSLI-Y
Diogene Artiles
My name is Diogene Artiles, and I participated in the NSLI-Y Korea Summer 2017 program - one of the most life-changing experiences of my life. I became involved with iEARN afterwards as a Fall Intern and Spring Fellow. I started the Diversity Committee, which soon turned into IDEA, with Ligaya, Signe, and Nicole. Living in a very prosperous yet very homogeneous city like Seoul allowed me to want to help other low-income people of color as they assimilate into similar environments abroad. Everyone's experience will be unique, but we can try our best to prepare the next generation of global travelers.
Session Description
IDEA hopes to present both the logistical and thematic visions of the committee. We hope to describe what it means to have inclusion, diversity, and equality abroad, through the means of supporting and outreaching to people of several backgrounds to participate in study abroad programs. In addition, we will describe the logistics of our meetings: how often we meet online and how we keep seamless communication with each other despite living in different states.
What will youth learn and be able to do at the end of the session?
Educators and/or youth will learn that study abroad programs need to be diversified so that different communities can benefit from a global perspective.
Additional Session Information
We also hope to present different statistics regarding the necessity for diversity abroad, such as the fact that in 2015-2016, 71.6% of study abroad students were non-Hispanic white and 54% of these students only traveled to Europe.