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Dec. 22, 2010
 Morningside College student David Riveros García recently helped organize and participated in an international youth summit that brought together 50 youth leaders from 19 countries in the Western Hemisphere. Among other things, Riveros García helped secure a $125,000 grant from the U.S. Department of State that helped fund the summit, which was held in Panama City, Panama.
Riveros García organized a group of youth ambassadors over Skype and Facebook to design the vision and objectives of the summit. Then he presented a draft proposal to summit organizers that was used to craft the concept approved and funded by the U.S. Department of State.
The summit was assembled by Partners of the Americas, a non-profit, non-partisan international grassroots network that was first inspired by President John F. Kennedy. It is one of the largest volunteer-based organizations in the Western Hemisphere engaged in social, economic and cultural development. The youth summit worked to create a network of young leaders that could take regional and national projects to the international level.
“Today’s youth ambassadors will be the leaders of tomorrow. In the Western Hemisphere alone, nearly one-third of the population is under the age of 20,” says Ann Stock, U.S. assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs. “We must engage with these young people now as they develop the skills, ideas and values that will shape our future.”
Riveros García is an international student from Hernandarias, Paraguay. As a high school student, he organized a student strike at his high school to draw attention to corruption among the school’s administrators. In 2009, the U.S. Embassy in Paraguay named Riveros García one of 10 “2009 Youth Ambassadors” from Paraguay. Also in 2009, he was named a “Global Changemaker” by the British Council. In 2010, he represented the British Council Global Changemakers network at the World Economic Forum on Latin America in Cartagena, Colombia, and he attended the Global Youth Anti-Corruption Forum in Brussels, Belgium.
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