Innovation Competition Past Winners

The following recipients are the winners of past Innovation Competitions, presented during the Diversity Abroad Conference. Inspired by their stories? Next year’s competition will open in the fall of 2019. Sign up here to receive updates.

Past Winners

2020 Winners | 2019 Winners | 2018 Winners | 2017 Winners

Domestic Exchange: Creating Global Experiences for Undocumented/DACA Students – 1st Place Winner

Kevin Graham, UC San Diego

The UC San Diego Domestic Exchange Program provides undocumented/DACA students with access to domestic travel experiences. This program is designed to positively influence their personal development and career outlook. The Domestic Exchange Program is an essential initiative for undocumented/DACA students as their immigration status does not allow for international travel. Exposure to academic life at different institutions will enable students to self-reflect and gain perspective on how their identity mobilizes in different spaces (states, social groups, fields of study, etc.). These insights and experiences will have implications for students’ career development. Participants would have the opportunity to build a network and to further understand the impact of their immigration status.

Once the program commences, a cohort of UC San Diego, Undocumented/DACA students will have the opportunity to travel to New York State. Each student participant will be exposed to academic life at the University of Rochester for one academic quarter. Within the duration of this timeframe, students will take courses related to their interests and majors. They will also actively participate in a series of professional and personal development workshops. The funding from the Diversity Abroad Innovation competition allows UC San Diego to provide each student with a travel grant to cover the cost of health fees, airfare, ground transportation, and winter clothing.

Increasing Black Male Achievement through International Experience – 2nd Place Winner

Lavar Thomas, Co-founder – Leaders of the Free World (LFW)

Leaders of the Free World (LFW) is an international experience and leadership development program for young Black men (18-27). The program focuses on creating dynamic leaders through access to global engagement opportunities and personal development experiences. The program is funded through institutional contributions, small grants, and individual donors.

Currently, Black men make up just 2% of all US study abroad participants, so LFW works to remove barriers to participation. The program integrates the paradigm-shifting experience of short-term study abroad, with mentorship, an identity-based curriculum, and leadership development training. These components are designed to improve academic retention while developing each student’s confidence, potential, and leadership capacity.

While the trip to Ghana has been postponed to 2021 due to COVID-19, the funding from the Diversity Abroad Innovation competition will allow the Leaders of the Free World program to increase their impact domestically and internationally. The program plans to partner with institutions in the US and Ghana to expand their virtual platform for cross-cultural dialogue, and encourage more young Black men to build their leadership skills through global engagement and intercultural exchange. The funds will also be used to support the current LFW cohort.

STAMPED – The Study Abroad Podcast – 3rd Place Winner

Charis N. Tucker, Founder – Travel Gene LLC

STAMPED: The Study Abroad Podcast launched during International Education Week 2019. This podcast was designed with two audiences in mind: international educators and underrepresented students. For international educators, the goal of STAMPED was to move our conversation (about BIPOC participation) from deficits to one of determination. The stories shared on STAMPED illustrate how our guests overcame barriers to make their study abroad dream a reality. For students, the hope is that they see themselves represented in the stories our guests so openly share. STAMPED is the first major project of Travel Gene LLC, a boutique tourism research and consulting agency where Black travel research and study abroad intersect! Funding from the Diversity Abroad Innovation Competition will provide upgrades to podcast equipment, support enrollment in training designed specifically for podcast hosts, and begin the development of a professional development course for industry professionals. Tune into STAMPED at anchor.fm/STAMPED.

Teens of Color Abroad — 1st Place Winner & People’s Choice Award
Lamar Shambley, Founder, Teens of Color Abroad

Teens of Color Abroad is a non-profit initiative whose mission is to cultivate the next generation of globally conscious youth of color through language immersion study abroad programs. There is extensive research on the long-lasting academic, social, and professional benefits of studying abroad, yet, students of color, especially Black students, have been excluded from this experience. Our aim is to confront this racial disparity in college study abroad participation earlier by providing high school students of color, who are enrolled in foreign language courses, with culturally immersive language training programs that enhance global competency skills and mindsets.

In a partnership with Centro MundoLengua, a private international language school and educational tour operator, TOCA facilitates programs in Seville, Spain for groups of U.S. high school students of color. The scholars will take 3 hours of small group daily language instruction, live with a local homestay family, and participate in engaging cultural activities such as visits to historic museums and palaces, salsa and flamenco dance lessons, kayaking the Guadalquivir River, paella cooking workshops, and much more. Part of our curriculum is centered around the PISA Global Competency Framework which will provide a foundation for intercultural conversations between our participants and their homestay families. Prior to departure and upon returning from our trip, students will organize and run a series of “Bingo!” nights for the Spanish-speaking members of the Carter Burden Network, a New York City-based nonprofit leading the way in aging services. Learning to participate in interconnected, complex, and diverse societies is a necessity in 21st-century education. Young people want to engage with the world, but lack the resources. TOCA provides a unique opportunity that gives underrepresented youth a globally informed perspective while bolstering their linguistic skills.

Indigenous Storytelling from the Amazon: Reimagining Diversity and Inclusion from the Grassroots  – 2nd Place Winner
Daniel Bryan, Executive Director, Pachasanya

Pachaysana is an Ecuadorian non-profit organization that creates intercultural education and study abroad programs with indigenous and other underrepresented communities of the Amazon and Andes. Over the years, we have learned that to truly break down barriers that systematically exclude marginalized communities, it is imperative to rethink diversity from the epistemological point of view. How we see and approach Diversity and Inclusion on our college campuses is shaped by a Eurocentric epistemology, excluding multiple ways of knowing and being that surely need to be integrated. This project reverses the dominant trajectory of the Diversity Abroad conversation. It grounds the center of knowledge creation in Amazon communities of Ecuador and then disseminates it to universities and study abroad organizations, encouraging them to rethink how they understand and operationalize diversity on their campuses or in their programs.

This project takes Pachaysana’s Team and students from the “Uni-Diversidades” office of the University San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) to two indigenous Amazon communities that have experience working with Pachaysana’s study abroad programming. During 2-week residencies in each community the team works to convert indigenous epistemologies into a performance and workshop. The community members then travel to Quito where they share with USFQ and other in-country study abroad programs with the goal of influencing their policies, curricula and pedagogies. The same workshop/performance will be offered at international student orientations, resulting in no less than 800 students, faculty and staff that will have access to the program during the academic year. Finally, Pachaysana and USFQ will create workshop videos and manuals in order to make the experience available to educational institutions abroad, especially USFQ’s 100+ international university partners around the world.

Rhode Island Global Education Project  – 3rd Place Winner

Becky Spritz, PhD – Professor of Psychology and Public Health, Roger Williams University  (RI)

Conor Largey – Student Youthworker St. Peters Immaculata Youth Club (Belfast, Northern Ireland)

Rev. Glenn Grayson – Executive Director, The Center that Cares (PA)

In Rhode Island, largely Latin X youth living in the Urban Core—Providence, Pawtucket, Central Falls, Woonsocket, and Newport—lack access to experiential education programs known to improve academic, social, and emotional outcomes. Our vision is to reduce the achievement gap in Rhode Island by creating a coalition of educators, philanthropists, and community leaders, and create a formal model to provide youth in the Urban Core unique opportunities for global youth education.

Building on previous scalable global education innovations from Belfast, Northern Ireland and Pittsburgh, PA, Amizade will partner with Highlander Charter School to pilot a project for young people to engage and learn from the world. The first project will involve a small group of Rhode Island youth taking part in a full semester of pre-activities for high school students (mentored by university professors), followed by a brief summer immersion to Northern Ireland, and completed with a social action community project that the young people will create and implement in Providence on return, with actual project funding.

The power and innovation in this model is in transforming global education from being viewed as a luxury, to being viewed as a necessary experience in all young people’s education. The main goal, therefore, is to ensure that like math and science, global education gets a place in policymakers minds for being part of the building blocks of creating the next generation of Americans. At every turn of this pilot project, Rhode Island political and education leaders will be hearing stories and being exposed to the research. The end game is a formalization of innovative global education practices and more equitable opportunities in high schools not only in Rhode Island, but all over the country.