Amanda Cleghorn cooking in her host family's kitchen

"For as long as I can remember, I wanted to do something to make a difference, but I could never put my finger on what it was," recalls high school senior Amanda Cleghorn. During Spanish class, Ms. Cleghorn's teacher mentioned the Amigos de las Americas program. Amanda remembers, "Right when she said it, I was like, 'I have to do that!'"

At first, her parents were skeptical. No other student from the school district had expressed interest in the program. They agreed to attend an orientation meeting and learned that Amigos fosters leadership in teenagers through community service in Latin America. After they realized that more than 600 students from around the United States had signed up, Ms. Cleghorn's parents were convinced that she should participate in the six-week summer program.

Ms. Cleghorn was matched with two other "Amigos" from different cities in the United States, and with the assistance of a host organization and a weekly visit from a field supervisor, the three teens worked to improve life in a small Dominican Republic village.

Ms. Cleghorn recalls, "It was just so cool how much responsibility we had. I was 16 years old, trying to speak Spanish, gathering a town of people together, trying to come up with ideas with them to solve problems and allocate materials. We ended up building stoves with chimneys, working on a reforestation project and, with a grant from Colgate, handing out a lot of toothbrushes and toothpaste.

"The main point of the stoves is to prevent acute respiratory infections," she explains. "The stoves we built had chimneys so that the smoke went outside the house instead of staying inside where the family would breathe it. Whenever we were in someone's home and they didn't have a chimney with their stove, we tried to explain how important it was."

Ms. Cleghorn enjoyed the program so much she signed up again and spent the following summer in Honduras. She and her team lived in a small village where they built water storage tanks so the women wouldn't have to haul heavy buckets back and forth from the river. They also installed covered shelves in homes so that malarial mosquitoes wouldn't be attracted to exposed food.

Ms. Cleghorn's experiences with Amigos de las Americas not only allowed her to "make a difference," but they also changed her life. "You don't think you change that much in six weeks, but you can," she explains. "Being in those places makes you see things outside of your little world. I see people as people and not for their different race or economic situation. I've got more friends because I've become more open-minded."

She continues, "Before I left, my parents and I weren't getting along very well. While I was away, I realized I missed them more than anyone, and it became a goal for me to strengthen my relationship with them. We've been fine ever since. I'm like best friends with my mom."

The program has influenced Ms. Cleghorn's future, too. Next year she plans to study international business at Texas Christian University. "Now I think of things on a global basis," she explains. "No matter what I do, I want to do it internationally because I can't just exclude other parts of the world from my plans."

Back to index