Although there are many opportunities for community involvement and volunteer work throughout the local community, there are also projects available to students on a much larger scale. One of the most unique volunteer opportunities available to high school students is the United States Youth Ambassadors program, which sends students, ages 15-17, throughout Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean.

Junior Gabe Ruano applied to be a part of this program in late 2019. He initially heard about the program through Senior Caroline Clontz, who traveled to the Dominican Republic last summer. Half-Ecuadorian by descent, Ruano lived in South America for a time and is semi-fluent in Spanish.

“Caroline introduced me to [Youth Ambassadors] through a presentation she gave in Spanish class. I was very excited about the idea. I got letters of recommendation and applied that weekend,” Ruano said.

Ruano was soon contacted by the organizers of the program and began the long interview process to go overseas as a volunteer.

“I wrote two essays about why I wanted to participate in the program. I filled out a lot of basic information and spoke a minute straight in Spanish. After that, I made it to the semi-final round and did a Skype interview that was about 20 minutes,” Ruano said.

In late January, Ruano was informed that he was selected to become a Youth Ambassador. He was to be sent to Brazil from June 1st to June 19th.

“I was super thrilled. I was honored to have been selected from the pretty decent sized pool of people who had applied. I was excited to represent us and go down there to help in any way I could,” Ruano said.

Ruano began preparing for his trip early by beginning to study the Portuguese language.

He expected a full itinerary of the trip sometime in April. As restrictions resulting from the Covid-19 virus began to fall into place in mid-March, the fate of Ruano’s trip sat in limbo.

Finally, in late March, he received an email announcing that the trip would be fully canceled.

“It wasn’t a surprise, but it was still sad. I was pretty excited to get to do this and go somewhere I’ve never gone and helped out. I was looking forward to bringing what I’d learned back here too,” Ruano said.

Although all summer trips are canceled, the Youth Ambassadors program is still hoping to do some sort of virtual session in the future, but little has been released so far.

Ruano does hope to travel later in life and possibly participate in a study abroad program in college if given the opportunity. Assuming the world returns to a state of relative normalcy by next summer, Youth Ambassadors will be open for Shaler Area students to travel and volunteer south of our border to learn about other cultures and grow through work and education.