The Diplomat in Spain

The Diplomat

The Counselor of Public Diplomacy of the Embassy of the United States in Spain, Stewart Tuttle, has delivered the prizes of the photographic contest #YoSoySWT, directed to the participants of the program Summer Work Travel, that traveled to the country with a visa of category J-1.

A fun photo of a group of friends in front of the traditional American school bus, a hiker under the starry night of Yellowstone, athletic lifeguards prepared for action in a water park, and a girl hugging the city of Dallas with her greeting. These are the images that have won the first #YoSoySWT photo contest. Urtzi Sainz of Urturi, the winner, has won an Apple Watch Series 4 and the rest of the finalists, an Apple Airpod each.

Two months ago, the Department of Public Diplomacy organized this contest with the aim of involving all those who applied for a J-1 category visa in 2019 (that is, the one that gathers participants of the Summer Work Travel program, au-pairs or camp monitors among others) to upload a photograph to Instagram illustrating their experience in the United States.

In this way, the U.S. Embassy wants to make young Spanish university students aware of the variety of offers and programs that exist to travel to the country and learn English, in addition to the educational opportunities that open later for all these students.

More than 100 people took part in this photographic challenge which, although it finally rewarded the four most original and illustrative photographs, made a selection of around twenty of them which have been exhibited on the walls of the Consulate in Madrid.

Last Friday, the Embassy opened its doors to all the participants of the contest, who visited the photographic exhibition and received a training session on opportunities to study in the United States by the academic advisors of EducationUSA Aurora Francisco and Sandra Gómez Todó.

After this meeting, the Councillor for Public Diplomacy, Stewart Tuttle, invited the participants to a barbecue, followed by a guided tour of Ambassador Duke Buchan’s art collection and the award ceremony.