Amigos de las Américas

Amigos de las Américas (AMIGOS) is the non-profit organization expert in international youth leadership and service programming. We envision a world where all people are lifelong leaders sharing responsibility for our global community. Since our founding in 1965, more than 30,000 alumni have completed an AMIGOS program in 17 countries. As the following video showcases, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVrABCSawT4, we are continuing to use our expertise to strengthen four components of our program model: cultural humility, mentorship, ethical service, and reflection and continued engagement. AMIGOS applies the principles of positive youth development theory, asset-based community development theory, and social and emotional learning theory to create transformational programs. In 2022, hundreds of students will grow into confident and motivated young leaders. With our organization, you can activate young people to create positive change in an evolving world.

We envision a world where all people are lifelong leaders sharing responsibility for our global comm

Goal One: A sustainable financial model and program offerings.

Goal Two: A simplified and effective organizational structure that expands reach and expands enrollment

Goal Three: Brand visibility for increased mission reach

Each summer, we hire more than 50 seasonal staff. These leaders implement our programs on the ground and directly mentor, support, and ensure the health and safety of the hundreds of students who participate in AMIGOS every summer. Our seasonal staff are coaches, guides, friends, and confidants to our students. We invest time and money to train these seasonal staff. AMIGOS spends $275 per day on staff for this week-long training of our summer seasonal staff. Their training prepares them to create learning activities and in-the-field excursions for our students. Training also instructs our season staff on how to partner with local communities, how to check in on the emotional health of students, how to facilitate cross-cultural exchange, and how to engage students in conversations on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

In 2021, after a year of entirely virtual programs due to the pandemic of the Coronavirus, AMIGOS designed group pod-based programs to minimize the risk of students and local community members contracting the Coronavirus in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Colorado, the latter of which marked our first in-person program in the United States excluding our federally funded program. Groups of 20 students lodged together in a hotel or hostel rather than our traditional host family stay model. While quarantining during the first week, our students remained inside their lodging, participated in Spanish classes and leadership activities, and explored their specific program’s environmental-based theme. AMIGOS required our students to wear masks and to socially distance from each other to prevent the spread of COVID-19. After a week in quarantine, students transitioned into safely and responsibly participating in service projects with their surrounding communities. Masks still had to be worn by students and community members whenever the students were interacting with individuals from outside their group pod. These protective measures were successful in maintaining the health and safety of students and the communities we operated in this past year. Although this program model removed homestays and individual service project work, we identified many benefits to the group pod-based format of the program. For example, many students had felt lonely over the past year before joining AMIGOS because many schools had migrated to completely virtual learning without in-person activities. Our group pod-based model gave these students the chance to partake in the human interaction they desired.