Program Overview
Program Overview
Picture your summer in Spain.
Leading activities at an urban summer camp for city youth. Exploring Seville’s old town or grabbing late-night tapas with your Spanish peers. Joining the joyful crowds on the banks of the Guadalquivir River to celebrate the feast of La Virgen del Carmen.
A beautiful city rich with history, Seville and the surrounding area of Andalusia, is a mosaic of religions, cultures, and remnants of past empires. By exploring this history while living and interacting with locals, you’ll discover how seemingly insurmountable differences can be bridged and respect found between people.
From sharing your passion for the arts with local children, to encountering another new culture on a week-long tour of Morocco, the CIEE Leadership Academy in Spain offers you amazing experiences and new intercultural perspectives.
Service
Service
Don’t just follow your passion, share it.
In Seville you’ll spend your days volunteering at a camp for children who spend their summer in the city. Beginning at 10AM each morning, you’ll report to one of a number of urban campsites located throughout Seville.
As a facilitator providing supervision and support for camp activities, you’ll share your passion for technology, the sciences, or the arts with local children who are dying to improve their English language skills with native speakers. You’ll also have the opportunity to organize an activity or exercise of your own that shares some aspect of American culture with the campers.
Working at the camp will give you the opportunity to meet new people and explore new parts of the city while serving as a positive influence and a great resource for local children.
Leadership
Leadership
The goal of the CIEE Leadership Academy is to train the next generation of innovators, leaders, change makers, and social entrepreneurs—the young people who will help solve the greatest challenges of the 21st century.
In Spain you’ll explore concepts and develop skills that will help you to think independently, effectively manage situations, and more easily navigate interpersonal experiences throughout your life—preparing you for college and beyond. You’ll do this by:
- Developing a personal portfolio that tells the story of your life—an autobiography that explores your passions and strengths, your dreams and aspirations
- Journaling your experiences while on the program to analyze the meaning and purpose of your life
- Analyzing case studies of young leaders who have become change makers by solving critical social problems
- Applying the skills and concepts you learn in class to real-life scenarios you’re facing every day during your service project
Language
Language
What good is language training if you can’t apply it?
The goal of the survival Spanish class is to give you basic language tools and challenge you to put them to use in the real world. Armed with a functional vocabulary, you and your peers will take to the streets with your professor. In the supermarket, on the bus, and at restaurants, you’ll practice daily activities like reading menus and ordering food that allow you to truly interact with locals.
From excursions to service projects, you’ll take part in activities that tie into and allow you to continue building upon and apply your language learning.
Living
Living
If you want to understand another culture you have to experience it.
Let Spanish peers show you some steps and get moving to traditional music at a local dance. Join a student-led kayaking club or study Spanish guitar with a professional instructor. Take cruises on and walking tours along the Guadalquivir River, the waterway that is the lifeblood of the city.
One weekend you’re in Cordoba touring the remarkable Great Mosque and the old Jewish quarter. The next you’re in Cadiz, one of the oldest cities in Europe, with its amazing beaches, great food, and welcoming people.
Being joined by local students on many of these activities is a great opportunity for both you and your Spanish contemporaries; activities and excursions provide a relaxed, but stimulating environment for mutual cultural exchange.
week-long tour
week-long tour
After spending three weeks exploring Seville and the surrounding region, the final week of the program offers you another incredible opportunity: a week spent exploring a different city, country, and continent.
You and your peers will travel to Morocco for a week of exciting cultural exchange. Ride camels on the beach at Ashila, visit Roman ruins, and hike through the Rif mountains. Traveling between the cities of Tangier, Rabat, Fez, Chefcaouen, and Ceurta, you’ll live with host families and spend time engaging with local students, giving you a firsthand look into the lives and customs of another people. Activities include guided tours of the city centers and a trip to a rural mountain village.
The week-long tour gives you a chance to experience Morocco off the typical tourist path. You’ll enjoy an authentic glimpse into the culture while celebrating the completion of the program and reflecting upon your time abroad with your new friends.
Program Leader – Lauren Vachon
Program Leader – Lauren Vachon
Lauren Vachon is a twenty-two year old student at Northeastern University, in Boston, MA. She is currently on co-op, working full time at a non-profit organization. Her major is International Affairs and Spanish. She recently returned from Sevilla after studying abroad with CIEE this past fall and anxiously awaits returning. Lauren is fluent in Spanish and after both years of study and her hands-on learning in Sevilla, has a deep understanding of the Spanish culture and daily life.
Being in a leadership role is nothing new for Lauren. She has been a tutor for underprivileged and at-risk high school students in Boston, and while abroad in Sevilla, worked outside the city at an elementary school with students ranging from 6 to 9 years old, teaching English. Her experience as a high school student on a similar leadership program in New Zealand and Australia gives her the understanding of the excitement and opportunity of this Leadership program, as well as the ability to provide boundaries for the participants.
Lauren hopes to instill her passion for learning, traveling and share her enthusiasm and knowledge of the culture in Sevilla to the great group of students that will share this experience with her in Sevilla and Morocco this summer during the Leadership Academy.
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