In our first year alone, PartnersAU volunteers created hugely successful events on campus featuring prominent speakers from Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and the United States. They raised money to buy computers for vulnerable community schools in Colombia, and they laid plans for a microfinance project in collaboration with Kiva. Perhaps more remarkably, PartnersAU and Partners of the Americas leveraged support from American Airlines, who donated 14 round-trip international air tickets to bring international student leaders from nine countries and four U.S. states to D.C. in July for the first-ever PartnersCampus Convention.
For this year, PartnersAU is already planning a series of events featuring USAID technical experts from the Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, a Latin American film series, a soccer tournament fundraiser and a service project in collaboration with the PartnersCampus student group in Puebla, Mexico.
Seven of our members have gone on to hold paid internships at the Partners of the Americas’ International Office and one has even worked as the organization’s consultant for class credit.
Any new organization struggles to reconcile its dreams with the resources at hand. But for any student organization, regardless of its size, that is a tremendous first year.
Ukiah Busch President, PartnersAU Master’s Candidate, US Foreign Policy Program School of International Service
