Category: News

 By Bo Hou ’21, China

Five UWC-USA students unable to return home due to the COVID-19 pandemic returned to the Montezuma campus on May 19 to work on the farm. All had been staying with host families since leaving campus in mid-March.

Kritim Krishna Rijal ‘20, Nepal; Milania Lucia Soares da Costa ‘20, Timor-Leste; Paula Fabiana Ramirez Orozco ‘20, Ecuador; Bo Hou ’21, China; and Daniela Rivas Clavel ‘21, El Salvador are living in dean of students Naomi Swinton’s three-bedroom home. 

Most cannot go back home because their countries are locked down.

“I plan to stay here until the border back home opens because until then, I don’t have another place to be,” said Kritim.

“If everything can be normal again before or during July, I will travel back to my country. I think I like the farm. Also living with people of similar age as I am is fun,” Milania said. 

Residential Life proposed the idea to the UWC-USA Strategic Leadership Team.

“We typically have had farm interns over the summer, usually not students or recent alumni though,” Naomi said. “We wanted to be sure to be able to continue to distribute produce locally in the community as many people benefit from the donations of fresh vegetables and fruit in town.”

The students work on the farm from 8 to 11 a.m. and then 7 to 8 p.m. five days a week. While at the farm, students are supervised by farm manager Adrian Carter and environment systems teacher Ben Gillock. Resident coordinator Alex Curtiss oversees students when they are away from the farm.

Students are expected to stay on campus except for emergencies or chaperoned trips, wear masks in public, wash hands regularly and report any health symptoms immediately. They also are expected to uphold the UWC Code of Conduct, and consider safety and responsibility as they carry out their tasks on campus, Naomi said.  

Kritim talked about his experience on the farm.

“A lot of things are new, especially because I have not been involved in the farm, at least not for a while, but it is pretty interesting,” he said. “Some of the chores are challenging, while others are comparatively easier. The overall experience however is pretty satisfying.”

Students make breakfast and dinner, and through the end of May, got lunches from the cafeteria.

“It is usually good,” Kritim said. “But even if we get the food from there, we have to bring it to our place and eat it.”

Besides the cafeteria, all castle rooms and other dorms are locked.

“We can only access the library and IT Center,” Milania said. “Other than that (access) is not allowed by the school, but (we have access to) the castle only for taking lunch food.”

Students are enjoying their time on campus.

“It was a nice opportunity to meet some friends and faculty,” Kritim said.

“I can access the library, so I read for fun,” Milania added. “And there is a projector to watch movies.”

The United World College-USA is encouraging the community to write to President Trump and Congress to lift the temporary bans on travel to the United States from 31 countries and reopen U.S. consulates so students can get visas.

In the first 24 hours more than 200 people participated in this effort. Refer to this link on the UWC-USA website for a sample letter and more information.

“I think it’s really important for as many people as possible to send a message to their congressperson that these presidential proclamations affect not only us, but many other people at hundreds of institutions in the United States,” said John Carpenter, director of admissions at UWC-USA. “The proclamations affect our mission, our revenue, and the experience the kids get to have. We are committed to providing a UWC experience based on our values and we want to provide that to the same diverse group as always.”

UWC-USA is expecting a total of 220 students for the upcoming academic year who represent about 90 countries, Carpenter said. About half of those attending the two-year international high school in Montezuma, N.M., will be first-years, including nearly 30 from the United States. All students from abroad, except those from Canada, need visas to study here.

The United States has travel bans on China, United Kingdom, Ireland, Iran, Brazil and 26 European countries who share relaxed border controls. Carpenter has heard they could be lifted in 30 to 60 days.

“I’ve been checking websites, but nothing official yet,” he said. “We know we will start with a much smaller group in August. (Students) will come in waves as consulates do open.”

When COVID-19 spread worldwide, embassies were closed so its employees could return to the United States.

“The U.S. consulates have temporarily stopped issuing visas,” Carpenter said. “Even though (first-year students) have all the paperwork needed, the last step is having a visa interview at a consulate.”

Carpenter remains optimistic that bans will be lifted and consulates will reopen.

“However, it may be a while, which is why it’s important for us to reach out to our elected representatives to start issuing student visas again,” he said, noting the school will offer an online teaching, experiential education and residential program for students.

Carl-Martin Nelson, the school’s director of communications, cited a UWC tradition of activism for the effort to contact Washington.

“The UWC community is typically focused on action to solve problems rather than just talking about problems,” Nelson said. “We can all write letters and call our representatives in Washington to support these students and the international study community as a whole. We’re better off as a country when we have opportunities to learn with and from people from other places and with different backgrounds.” 

The San Miguel County 100% Community initiative is planning a summer event program that includes giveaways to 1,000 children.

The Mask Parade will be held from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, June 20, in Melody Park on the New Mexico Highlands University campus. Children ages 3 through 12 participating in the free drive-through event will receive masks, books, toys and other educational resources, said Kim Blea, dean of students for NMHU. Local residents have volunteered to make masks for the event celebrating summer reading, while the United World College-USA is donating 500 books and 1,000 toys.

“Education changed my life, and it started with Head Start,” said Victoria J. Mora, president of UWC-USA. “It means so much to me to be partnering to support literacy and learning through play in our local community.”

“The time we spend with our children reading, or playing games with them that teach them skills and develop their resilience, is never wasted,” Mora continued. “I’m so glad UWC-USA could provide books and games to so many children at a tough time for so many.” 

Participants are encouraged to decorate their vehicles and masks. Everyone must remain in their vehicles.

“We encourage people to attend this event,” Blea said. “For one, we want every resident including youth to have a mask. We are also really focusing on literacy, ensuring students and youth have access to education resources during the summer.”

“The main purpose of this is to celebrate the students, to keep them safe and educated through COVID-19 and to celebrate their efforts during distance learning,” said Liz Probst, community resources specialist for 100% Community. “It definitely wasn’t easy for them, and to celebrate their parents for their effort.”

The 100% Community helps residents have access to vital services committed to strengthening their health, safety and resilience. The county-focused initiative supported by the Anna, Age Eight Institute in Santa Fe is part of the state’s higher education system.

The purpose of the initiative is to connect the resources and support our people within the community,” said Probst, whose husband, Matt Probst, is director of 100% Community and medical director at El Centro Family Health.

“We all help those that need it most, and that will get our community through this,” Matt Probst wrote in an email. “United by the conviction in our hearts we join forces to fight disparity. This new and rapidly growing movement is already doing a lot of good.”

He noted that during the Mask Parade, families will receive surviving and thriving kits that will contain resources for families to have fun this summer in a safe way, resources for food and other free resources for youth, and information on how to be counted in the U.S. Census.

For more information or to participate, contact Liz Probst at lizprobst100@gmail.com or 505-470-3729.

 

Please join law professor, community activist, and author Arjun S. Sethi for a webinar on policing, surveillance, and its impact on communities of color. We’ll explore racial profiling, predictive policing, facial recognition, NSA surveillance, and other trends and practices, including new developments in light of COVID-19 and the unrest in the United States in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd.

There will be time for questions.

When: June 13 @ 9:00 am MDT (75 minutes)
Where: Online
How: Register for this free webinar below

This webinar is open to the public and sponsored by UWC-USA’s Bartos Institute for the Constructive Engagement of Conflict.

Arjun Singh Sethi is the author of American Hate and a frequent collaborator with UWC-USA and the Bartos Institute.

Congratulations to René Celaya ’88, recipient of the 2020 Giulio Regeni Alumni Impact Award.

As vice president for humanitarian programs at Sesame Workshop, René leads an innovative collaboration between Sesame Workshop and the International Rescue Committee. The committee provides early learning opportunities for displaced and host community children and caregivers affected by the Syrian conflict in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and northern Syria. The program will reach more than a million children by delivering urgent early childhood development support to families through classrooms and health clinics. The program will also provide an all-new, Arabic-language Sesame TV show called Ahlan Simsim that is broadcast in 20 countries across the Middle East and North Africa. Ahlan Simsim is also elevating awareness, engaging policy makers, spearheading research, and increasing investment to support the critical needs of early childhood development in crisis settings.

René appreciates that his commitment to international development started in a school by a castle in the small Southwest US town of Montezuma, New Mexico. He went on to earn a bachelor’s in Russian and Soviet studies from Harvard University and a master’s of international affairs on economic development from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

The Giulio Regeni Alumni Impact award honors UWC-USA alumni whose work and life exemplify the UWC mission. Giulio Regeni ’07 was an Italian citizen and a doctoral student at Cambridge University in the UK. He was conducting his Ph.D. research on the formation of independent trade unions, specifically the street vendors’ union, in Egypt after the fall of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. He was in Cairo conducting field research when on January 25, 2016, the fifth anniversary of the “25 January Revolution,” he disappeared. His body was found nine days later.

The UWC-USA faculty and staff, under the direction of the talented Dave Heldreth, produced a lipdub tribute to our students.

 

 

 

While we wish we were all gathering this Saturday on the soccer field below the Castle for graduation, we will not have that great pleasure this year.

Our graduation ceremony on Saturday will be an online event featuring our speakers, some reflections on the past year, and thoughts on the path ahead. The link to the event will be made public on the graduation page of our website and on the school’s social media channels at 10:30 am on Saturday, May 23.

We hope you will join us as we wish our graduating students well!

Bibi MacDougall ‘20, United Kingdom, received an unexpected surprise to help her follow her passion.

As the recipient of this year’s Sally Martin Prize, which traditionally includes being the student speaker during United World College-USA graduation, Bibi plans to use the $2,000 scholarship to move to London for a gap year to pursue an acting career.

“With the hectic life that UWC brings, I’m proud to have gotten through to the final round of applications/auditions at both the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts” she said. “I intend on moving to London to work and build up my acting resume.”

Twenty-one students from the Class of 2020 applied for the prize by writing 500-word essays about “Looking Forward and Looking Back.”  Students were asked what they would say to the Class of 2035 should they be invited to speak at their graduation. 

“I was simply shocked,” Bibi said about receiving the prize named in memory of Sally Martin, a young Englishwoman, good friend and neighbor of UWC-USA. Upon her death in 1993, her family created the Sally Martin Memorial Endowment. The income from the endowment funds an annual prize intended to assist with the student’s ongoing education.

“I really was not expecting to win the award so when Victoria (in a pre-recorded video) started to hint towards who it could be, I just started laughing in disbelief, I suppose,” Bibi said. “When they released the video it was around 1 a.m. here so I think it was safe to say my mum was slightly concerned when I started shouting and celebrating.”

Bibi looks forward to living with UWC friends in London.

“I’m looking forward to being in London and furthering my pursuit of a career in the performing arts and the broader world of theater,” she said. “I was really grateful to receive the award.”

Entrepreneur Allan Affeldt noticed one “tiny” flaw during last spring’s United World College-USA recycled clothing fashion show.

The venue was too small.

So immediately after the show closed at The Spot community center in Las Vegas, Affeldt offered the 3,200-square-foot ballroom at his nearby Plaza Hotel for the international high school’s Renaître Sustainable Fashion Show, which was set for April 11. It was canceled after students were sent home in mid-March because of the spread of COVID-19 in the United States..

 “I loved the (2019) show, and I thought it was deeply insightful as so many things are at UWC,” said Affeldt, who has spent millions restoring historic and abandoned hotels, including the Plaza Hotel and Castaneda, also in Las Vegas; La Posada in Winslow, Ariz.; and The Legal Tender Saloon in Lamy.

Affeldt’s offer stunned Jagoda Sokolowska, a UWC-USA student from Poland, who for a second year led the Montezuma school’s sustainable fashion show.

“I was so incredibly surprised,” said Jagoda, who has been accepted to Parsons Paris, a leader in art and design education. “It made me feel so humbly proud of myself after all this effort. It was definitely an incredible moment.”

For this year’s show, students planned to model redesigned fashions ranging from casual to very formal. The 10 student designers’ fashions were to be sold during a live auction at the close of the show. Donations were to go to Fashion Revolution, a global non-profit in campaigning for reform of the fashion industry with a focus on the need for greater transparency in the fashion supply chain.

Students also suggested that Jagoda sell her fashions from last year and sketches to help pay for her college. 

“I really was surprised because I was thinking about how much money I need for college,” she said.

Jagoda planned to donate 30 percent of the money from her sales to Fashion Revolution and save the rest for college.

Jagoda explained that Renaître is a fashion show that aims to express the importance and genuine beauty of sustainability, which is also part of the mission for UWC’s 18 schools around the world.

“All garments have been handmade from donated discarded clothing used as a fabric to give them a magnificent new life,” she said. “The collections of reborn attire have been entirely created by the students of UWC-USA.”

Designers also have been incorporating aspects from their own cultures into the lines.

UWC-USA art teacher Santos Contreras expected good things from this year’s show after last year’s event.

“Jagoda is really building upon that success,” Contreras said prior to the show’s cancelation. “She’s obviously very talented and has an ability to teach others to think about fashion and how to work with materials.”

Last year, students focused more on altering donated clothing, he said. This year students are taking apart and reusing the clothing.

“You can see the personality of individuals in the clothing,” Contreras said.

Student Vidar Onnerfors, Sweden, had never used a sewing machine prior to this fall, only a needle and thread to make a small pillow at age 8. Vidar’s interest in clothing and fashion prompted him to get involved with the show.

“I thought this was a useful opportunity to learn more about it and also to be able to design my own clothing,” he said. “I also found it interesting that we would only be using repurposed clothing and that sustainability was one of the center focuses. I think that in an industry which is generally highly unsustainable — at least when it comes to fast fashion brands — it is important to shift the focus away from such practices and understand how clothes can be made through recycling materials instead.”

Vidar made a fleece with a coffee cup design on the back and a pair of neon green pants.

Students started working on designs in September; only two had ever used a sewing machine prior to taking on the project.

“It’s really wonderful to see how people have developed,” Jagoda said.

As for her  own interest, Jagoda said as far back as she can remember, she has had a passion for fashion. She credits her grandmother, who passed at age 64 when Jagoda was only 6.

“She was incredibly close to me and she always looked so elegant,” the 18-year-old said. “I wanted to follow her activities and steps. She was also an incredibly strong person — a judge who advocated for women oppressed by the Communist government.”

At age 13, Jagoda’s dream of creating clothing came closer after she found her grandmother’s sewing machine on Christmas Eve. Jagoda took advantage of her two-week winter break to learn to use it.

“At the beginning I was sewing pillows and little toys, and over the summer, very simple clothing,” she said.

Three summers ago, Jagoda met a fashion designer who invited her to do a two-week internship at her shop.

“It was incredible, like a family feeling,” she said. “It was the first time I experienced more of this profession.”

Jagoda’s followup introduction to renowned Polish fashion designer Natasha Pavluchenko turned into a month-long internship. 

“It was the best fashion learning experience,” Jagoda said. “She was teaching me how to create a collection from the beginning — from sketching, developing ideas and sewing the clothing.”

Jagoda continued creating clothing with sustainability in mind.

“I was creating from new fabrics, old curtains, scraps. I wanted to convey what I wanted to express,” she said.

By Britti Paudyal

The March 12 decision to evacuate United World College-USA students from the Montezuma campus because of the spread of the  coronavirus left Jagoda Sokolowska stunned, confused and uncertain about what was next.

“I had no way of getting back home,” said Jagoda, who lives in Poland, which like many countries, had closed its borders in hopes of slowing the spread of the highly contagious virus.

“I planned on staying with my Get-Away family, but there were so many changes in plans, all within the span of an hour,” she said. 

Jagoda ‘20 traveled to Miami and stayed with her father’s best friend.

“From there, I boarded a plane sent by the Polish government to bring back Polish citizens from abroad,” she said. “I finally got home after an entire week after I left campus.”

COVID-19 since early this year had been spreading and wreaking havoc in China, surrounding countries, and Europe. When the pandemic reached the United States, the administration determined that the campus needed to be evacuated. First-year students had to leave campus within five days, by March 17. Two days later, it was announced that second-years had to leave by March 19. 

Students reacted in disbelief, confusion, anger, sadness and fear. Students had less than a week to stage a graduation, pack, and say goodbye. Graduation, Expressions and Blue Moon Cafe all took place on March 13.

Some students who traveled home, like Lukas Lahucky’ 21, Slovakia had to be quarantined for 14 days.

“I’m living in an apartment all by myself,” Lukas said. “My parents only bring me food.” 

Others like Sarah Akake Onyembe’ 20, Democratic Republic of Congo, chose to stay in New Mexico with a host family.

“My country closed the border so I will have to stay here,” Sarah said. “For now, I am just planning to continue with the online classes and have the IB experience for a few more months.” 

Britti Paudyal is a first-year UWC-USA student from Nepal.