Erin Aucar is the National Outreach Manager for Amigos de las Americas (AMIGOS) based in Arlington, VA. She serves as the young alumni coordinator and organizes the outreach strategy for the Regional Operations team at AMIGOS. Her goals for the year are to build partnerships for the Discover AMIGOS (for students 13-15-years-old) and AMIGOS Gap Year programs nationally.
Prior to AMIGOS, Erin studied Political Science and Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She has held internships on Capitol Hill and the Department of Commerce, studied abroad in Santiago, Chile, and served in a variety of service-learning programs offered through Notre Dame’s Center for Social Concerns. She is passionate about youth leadership, global education, and service-learning.
We recently interviewed Erin about her experience volunteering as a Venture Consultant with LearnServe’s in-school Seeding Social Innovation program, and why she wants to spread the word about this opportunity. You can learn more about LearnServe volunteer opportunities at learn-serve.org/volunteers.
What inspired you to volunteer with LearnServe?
I get to promote AMIGOS and the power of youth leadership opportunities on a daily basis at my job, but working directly with students is always the most inspiring. I saw LearnServe as an important opportunity to be inspired continuously throughout the year, by having touch-points with high school students on a monthly basis. LearnServe’s mission is so closely aligned with that of AMIGOS that I knew it was a special program and an organization I would be passionate about serving!
Given that LearnServe students go through a very similar process of collaborative changemaking, I really hope that we can inspire more LearnServe alumni to also participate in an independent immersion program with AMIGOS! I know that LearnServe alumni would really thrive there.
What was it like volunteering as a Venture Consultant?
The ability to watch students progress through their project was really fun. Each month it was exciting to see what changes they had made or what roadblocks they had encountered. Sometimes they took our feedback skeptically and then after finding an obstacle realized for themselves that they needed to make a change. That is what experiential learning is all about! Overall, it was cool to see it in action.
Could you share a particular story with us about an interaction with a student that made an impression on you?
I have two!
One group went through many iterations of their initial idea to make an impact on childhood cancer by creating a fund at a local hospital to help families going through the experience. They kept running into issues and getting frustrated. It challenged me to really search my brain as well, and somewhere along the way I had a faint memory of a remembrance tree on the campus of the University of Notre Dame. I told them about it – and it worked! This ended up being the idea that they implemented, and I was excited to be able to take part in that brainstorming process with them.
Many of our visits involved giving feedback on the students’ pitches (the delivery as well as content). Near the end of the year, I had the chance to do presentations about AMIGOS in the Spanish classes at SSSAS, and two of the girls who I had mentored were in the first block. After I was done, they joked “OK! Now It’s time for us to give you feedback!” We both laughed and thought it was so funny. I was just glad that we were able to build that relationship.
Who would you recommend volunteer with LearnServe?
I would recommend this opportunity to anyone who believes in the importance of challenging young people to be the best that they can be. Students want permission to dream big and learn from the world, and LearnServe gives them the space to do that. I saw volunteering with LearnServe as a great professional development opportunity, and I was right. Anyone interested in social enterprise, youth, education, or mentorship should definitely make time for this.