We attended One Young World Summit 2017 in Bogotá, Colombia. What is next?

Audi Scholars and Delegates during the last day of OYW 2017 and first ever OYW Peace Day

OYW 2017 in Bogota, Colombia has ended, and there are now 1,300+ new OYW Ambassadors. It was an inspiring summit that made all of us laugh, cry, scream, sing, dance, and imagine a new, better world together. It also ignited some of us to rethink our goals and passions, as there were so many wonderful ideas from a wide range of new perspectives. There was no way we could have been fully prepared for this. Even though we had watched videos from previous summits and had set expectations, learning and relearning from the speakers we listened to and the conversations we had will better prepare us to share a message of hope to those that surround us.

So, what is next? Now it is time to reflect and take action. What are we going to do with all we learned? Is it going to stay in our memories, perhaps in our notes, photos, and social media, or are we going to do something about it?

Exciting News and Upcoming Events

Short recap of this year so far: We made it to Regionals, and Nationals in Table Tennis; I graduated from UW-Madison in May; went to my brother’s graduation in UC Davis in June; took a trip to the East Coast (DC, NYC, Boston, Chapel Hill) for some meetings and visited friends and relatives in July; took a very last-minute adventurous trip to Mackinac Island, MI, to visit friends/family in August. Other than that, I have spent the rest of the summer in the lovely city of Madison, WI.

I am traveling today, August 12, to Costa Rica to work on UpTica. Five other UW students -also sustainability minded and great friends- are there already, and we are going to rendezvous in San José. After a few days we will go to Pérez Zeledón, where we will be spending much of our time with Nicol’s family. We have a few smaller projects going on, but we hope to focus mainly on engaging community members and building strong relationships with local groups and individuals. This is also going to be a great learning experience for all of us as some of us didn’t know each other before working on this project, we all come from different backgrounds, and we will be able to bond with each other really well.