American Leadership Experience with Ukraine

A few weeks ago, we hosted yet another group from overseas. This group was particularly interesting since these students had applied for high school year abroad program when they were in high school, 4 years ago. Due to the pandemic and ongoing war in Ukraine, applicants did not have the chance to come to the US for a year. So, you can imagine how thrilled the participants were when they finally received the confirmation that they were flying to the United States for the first time. It was not a yearlong program, but just 3 weeks, nevertheless, everyone was determined to make the best of this experience. We had the pleasure of welcoming 11 undergraduate students from Ukraine for a week, a segment of their 3-week program. The American Leadership Experience (ALEX) was hosted by FIUTS in partnership with the American Councils for International Education.

The program was centered around various themes, including entrepreneurship, volunteering and civic engagement, diversity, equity, inclusion, and leadership and other themes proposed and approved by the American Councils. The subtheme for this group was entrepreneurship, therefore ALEX participants visited a number of leading businesses and organizations in our area, as well as met with guest speakers and representatives of the Ukrainian diaspora, as well as engaged in a volunteer activity at Food Lifeline. We are grateful to the Port of Seattle, Foster School of Business at UW, DigiPen Institute of Technology and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for hosting the group.

As part of FIUTS’ mission and American Council guidelines, we also integrated cross-cultural activities into the schedule, aiming to enhance exposure and interchange between participants and Americans. Participants stayed at volunteer host families’ homes for a weekend and also got to hang out with local students acting as Ambassadors to local culture and norms. Participants got to share their culture with the host families by doing an interactive country presentation before being picked up by host families.

As always, we are enormously grateful to all the community members, including host families, guest speakers, and student ambassadors who contributed their time and effort to this program.

Here are some highlights from their trip to Seattle: