“We won ten thousand dollars!” Not many groups, especially in high school, can say that; however, Dominion’s Global Ambassadors have managed to make this a reality. This group of globally aware students has worked hard in order to gain a grant from the Pepsi Refresh Project to create Dominion’s first international youth leadership summit.

        Over the summer, some of the members got together to brainstorm ideas for the summit and decided in order to get the money they needed they would apply for the Pepsi Refresh Grant, one of the more “teenager friendly grants” current member and one of the leading coordinators of the summit Leslie Mark said.

        The group came out in full force to spur the school community to vote online and text in to Pepsi Refresh in order to gain the necessary votes for the grant. They created a video for the announcements, constantly posted on facebook, and even set up laptops during lunch to get people to vote. “The Pepsi Refresh project was really driven by club members reaching out to the school community, it was really a school wide effort to get the grant and the support we received from the school community was remarkable and greatly appreciated,” Global Ambassador President Leah Day said.

        Global Ambassadors sponsor Jennifer Rodgers explained that the group was started by Alex Shofe and other students who went on the India trip with Dominion in fall of 2009. After the trip, the students realized they wanted more global awareness as well as a chance to do service and soon they created the global ambassadors.

         The purpose of global ambassadors is “to spread global awareness and tolerance among Dominion students…give them a sense of the world around them,” Mark said. Day said the goals for the group this year are to “increase community awareness, expand our connections with other nations, aid the global community through community service and increase travel opportunities for dhs students.”

        This year the group has taken on a first for Dominion as well as the county, an international youth leadership summit. Rodgers explained that “after past summits to Singapore students realized Dominion would be a good place to host a summit with its proximity to DC.” The purpose of the youth summit is to “[give] dominion students an authentic leadership experience,” Rodgers said.

        “The purpose of a summit is to bring together global youth leaders, each country can only send 4 students from their country so that there is a wide range of countries represented. The students will engage in leadership experiences and broaden their global perspectives,” Day said.

        Pepsi Refresh grants money to different organizations each month who can apply for five, ten, twenty five, or fifty thousand dollars. They then award the top voted projects in each category with the money. The global ambassadors entered the youth summit in the ten thousand category, in which the top fifteen groups receive money, and finished in fourteenth place (this place was confirmed by Pepsi Refresh on December 20^th).

        “The money will be used for institutions for our guests to visit, summit wide meals, speakers, t-shirts, flyers, schedules, and programs to be printed, and tickets for a cultural experience such as a Capitals game,” Day said. Rodgers explained that each day the visitors are in Sterling, they will have a different theme such as justice in which the day’s activities will coordinate with the theme. For example, on the day where the theme is the world economy the AP Economics class will get a chance to take a field trip with the international students.

        Rodgers explained that the summit will take place from April fifteenth to the twenty-fifth and will include students from South Africa, South Korea, Lebanon, Germany, and Singapore.

        However, this project is just the beginning for the global ambassadors. “Global Ambassadors is also taking a service project called International Justice Mission. International Justice Mission is a non-profit organization whose goal is to stop modern day slavery. We will be kicking this project off a few weeks before the summit as we will incorporate the message into the summit and end it with a festival and dance-off similar to previous year's Dominion for Darfur concert,” Day said.