The Diplomat
US Ambassador to Madrid Julissa Reynoso and Miami Dade Commissioner Raquel Regalado are participating in this year’s edition of the “Camino de Santiago” programme, promoted since 2017 by CIS University and the International Studies Foundation (ISF) to provide opportunities for low-income youth in the United States and Spain.
The president of CIS University and ISF, María Díaz de la Cebosa, leads an initiative that has the support of the ambassador and the Commissioner of Miami Dade and the collaboration of important institutions such as Big Brother Big Sisters of Miami, International Finance Bank, the Consulate General of Spain in Miami and other sponsors.
The “Camino de Santiago” programme aims to promote interculturality and to be a meeting point for young students from different backgrounds, providing participants with a unique experience that will have a positive impact on their personal development. According to María Díaz de la Cebosa “through the programme we seek to promote the exchange of ideas, experiences and perspectives among young people from different cultures. We want to create a space for mutual learning and the strengthening of tolerance and empathy”.
In this year’s edition, ten young people between 14 and 16 years of age will participate in the “Go! American English” programme of the ISF Foundation in Madrid. This programme, which has the support of the US Embassy in Spain, consists of offering extracurricular scholarship training in English and American culture to students from different high schools in Madrid, over two school years.
The group will also be joined by ten students from Miami, of different nationalities (American, Cuban, Haitian and Jamaican), selected by the Big Brother Big Sister Foundation of Miami, with significant academic merit and limited resources. Also participating will be five students from AECI Charter High School, Bronx, New York and four students from Miami Dade College, Kendall Campus. All of them will walk in the footsteps of the medieval pilgrims along one of the main routes of the Camino, which will lead them to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia.
The group is joined by the Commissioner of Miami Dade District 7, Raquel Regalado, with her two children; the US ambassador; and the president of the Spanish Cultural Center of Miami, Julián Linares. Ambassador Reynoso said: “I have always wanted to walk the Camino, and to be able to do it with young people from the United States and Spaniards who walk together thanks to the ISF programme seems to me to be an excellent opportunity. The Camino is a great time for exchange and a reminder of the importance of diversity and the value of building bridges between people.
Among the monitors accompanying the group in this edition, the organization will have the presence of a young Ukrainian refugee in Spain since the beginning of the war, through the NGO “Crusade for Children”, belonging to CIS University, who lived as a pilgrim last year the experience of the Camino, with the help of the “International Studies Foundation”, and who wanted to participate again this year by contributing their experiences of the route. All of them are expected to arrive in Santiago de Compostela on 4 July.
