Surrounded by 830 people representing over 30 countries and 20 languages, I listened to the CEO of Partners of the Americas open the second ever World Summit held every 10 years. This past weekend, I attended the International Assocation for Volunteer Efforts (IAVE) World Summit conference in Barranquilla, Colombia at Universidad del Norte. I was invited by the Partners of the Americas to speak about my YSY group, Seva Football (www.sevafootball.org), on a panel at the conference. Seva Football is a student group at Edina High School that uses soccer as a medium to promote women’s empowerment abroad and education in Minneapolis. Seva has started leagues in India and Vietnam for girls, since in those countries girls do not get opportunities to play sports. Seva promotes soccer among Minneapolis’s Hmong and Latino youth to promote school attendance and discourage gang membership.

At the conference, 830 people from all over the world shared volunteer experiences and generated new ideas for sustainable volunteering. Each day, the conference started with presentations by NGO presidents and CEOs like Hugh Evans, the founder of The Global Poverty Project, and Steve Vetter, CEO of Partners of the Americas. These presentations were followed with smaller panels that targeted specific issues. For example, I attended a panel on how to use technology to promote service and spoke on a panel about sports development. The other speakers on my panel represented two soccer-oriented groups called A Ganar and Girls and Football South Africa. A Ganar uses soccer to teach skills that help at-risk youth get employed; they have programs in fourteen South American and Caribbean countries. Girls and Football South Africa teaches girls in South Africa about health and sexuality alongside soccer. It was amazing to see the different ways in which soccer can be used to promote youth development.

I also got a small project started in Colombia itself during the trip. In Manati, Colombia, there is an impoverished community that has been displaced because of incessant flooding. They live in tents; some are made of canvas, others of garbage bags. After meeting with members of Univoluntarios, who regularly work with youth in Manati, I learned that children there really want to play soccer. They’ve been playing with a dented lacrosse-sized ball. Seva will be sending soccer balls to Univoluntarios, who will distribute them among pickup leagues in Manati.

The conference wasn’t all work. I got to see (a little bit of) Colombia and socialize with people from all over the world. During the trip, I got to see different parts of the city of Barranquilla and the historic Cartagena. I ate lots of Colombian foods like arepas and bollos. On the last night of the conference, a cultural dance performance dazzled my hip hop dancing self. Conference attendants from Colombia, Peru, Jamaica, and St. Kits broke it down on the conference floor itself.