Service Synergy ~ Ambassador Service Study

It takes transformed people to uplift, transform and change the world, one human-sized chunk at a time. The Elevate Prize will launch thousands of teens into unique, experiential, service-learning community projects abroad that earn academic credit from their home school. Living abroad is transformational, and more so, doing it with purpose. 

The Prize accomplishes this launch by providing tools, expertise, and dedicated time to a team of collaborating educators, students and community members who will further write, publish and implement the Ambassador Service Study (AmbaSS) curriculum, which is an activation and communications hub. Ambassador students, with their Home Team, will use AmbaSS's guides and models to create their own unique project abroad, anywhere in the world, at much less cost than established programs. Its three phases are Preparation, Abroad 10+ weeks, and Presentation to the home community. It includes forming a supportive team, creating an Ambassadorial Communiqué blog, research, reflection, living with a host family, finding a venue abroad to serve alongside local people, learning a foreign language, and pursuing student-generated, integrated, independent studies, all the while telling the stories of his journey and the the people he meets. Authentic relationships and communication are key to AmbaSS--indeed, to all learning.

I am a certified Oregon educator, writer and artist who has experienced the immense educational value of living abroad.  Educators agree it is transformative, high-impact learning.  I am a practical visionary, so I have worked to resolve the "no time, no money" responses by centering AmbaSS on student initiative and teamwork, increasing access to such experiences for secondary students.

The richest part of being abroad is connecting with people, in their language and their place. As a foreign language teacher, I know that relationship drives language acquisition and that culture is embedded in language and place.  Being a nation of diverse cultures, America needs to understand and enjoy our neighbors; yet for every ten foreign students we receive, perhaps only one American teen learns experientially abroad. We'll understand our own culture's perspectives  better by experiencing the perspectives of another.

Furthermore, in colleges, "although the diversity of study abroad participation has increased in recent years, minority students are still greatly underrepresented in study abroad (source)." I assume there is less secondary participation.

Acquiring another language builds intelligence and cultural understanding. Interpersonal learning is innate in humans, and a delight central to AmbaSS. Building authentic relationships is a rich educational context.

Most Americans are monolingual, which limits their understanding of the rest of the world, and by extension, of our diverse neighbors at home. This ought not to be the case for purported world leaders. Service Synergy "creates global citizens, one friendship at a time."

The calligraphy below expresses the need to be aware of culture through a perspective outside of one's own.

Americans need fresh perspectives. Language and culture, closely related, are best learned IN CONTEXT. Designing one's own learning is engaging. Doing it with a team, reflecting on what one has learned and teaching it to others further deepen that learning. Service Synergy embraces these theorems while  creating the AmbaSS curriculum. AmbaSS exemplifies educational research and innovation by building in student choice, student voice, design thinking, teamwork, creativity, alternatives, immersion-experiential learning, project-based learning, reflection, relationship, collaboration, community, connection and communication as core values.

AmbaSS provides for individual, institutional and community transformation  through the catalyst of cultural and linguistic immersion. AmbaSS is the academic translation of an organic, personal process: experience. As such, it is flexible and adaptable. While rigorous, it is simple. For greatest effect, it is personal, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. 

The approach so far has been to write material, create websites, and chat in person with educators and students one-to-one. Everyone likes the AmbaSS concept, even though it innovatively disrupts lockstep schedules. 

The next step will be to create a broader reach-out to colleagues and participants with The Elevate Prize's resources.   The resulting peer and participant review will help achieve excellence and further engagement. Our board recently put on a Family Camp and raised $500 for an Ambassador scholarship. We knew that once Ambassadors initiated their projects, AmbaSS would grow. The Scholarship application is actually the first two action steps the Ambassador takes in the AmbaSS curriculum: 

• form a Team, and 
• create a blog setup (model here).

The Elevate Prize will multiply our engagement into other venues. As the first Ambassadors form their Teams, plan, travel, blog their ambassadorial communiqués, do their service-study projects, and then return to present them to their community, much "connection" momentum is built to inspire future participants. The Ambassador becomes a community educator, "teaching the whole village." AmbaSS is a community experience.  

Innovations that set AmbaSS apart are further detailed in the link and in the next response. 

Our future, continuing impact is that Ambassadors build authentic friendships all over the world and share their experiences with their communities at home and abroad. Ambassadors are vital bridges between people, cultures, and nations. Our planet needs many more such connections.

We connect with donor entities and continually get feedback from contacts. Engaging educators and students means finding more of them first, then inviting them into the growing curriculum posted in the Canvas course platform. This requires dedicated time to write more, network, and present to more venues: teachers' meetings, colleges, conferences, sister cities, language classes and community groups. For this, I  need to hire co-workers and expertise. The Prize is a great accelerator with which this multifaceted plane gives wings to young people otherwise barred by costs, educational traditions, and limiting mindsets.

I have a long list of amazing professional people I've been contacting whom I'll invite into various parts of the project. The Prize will connect me with even more solutionaries - for whom I hope to BE a great connection, too. 

Ambassador students ARE the impact we need to see: compassionate, generous, aware, experienced young people who are changing the world simply because they have been transformed themselves.