Our SLAmbassadors International Exchange program currently has three exchanges planned for the 2024-25 school year. Our first exchange is currently underway in Poland. For this component of the exchange, 10 students first traveled to Gdansk, a port city on the Baltic Sea, and explored local history and culture through the European Solidarity Centre and the Museum of the Second World War. We then traveled to Philadelphia’s Sister City of Torun, where our students participated in a large Model UN conference that is hosted at Torun’s High School 1. The conference has almost 300 delegates from 13 different countries, and SLA students worked in a variety of delegations to pass resolutions focused on the environment/climate change, telecommunication/AI, human rights, women’s issues, and world health. Our students also met the Deputy Mayor of Torun, as well as the Chair of Torun’s City Council at a special ceremony at City Hall. Through the exchange, students stayed with host families while in Torun to engage in a true cultural exchange, and we will be hosting the Polish students in Philadelphia in the Spring of 2025.

The SLA students thrived at the Model UN conference! Senior Ezra Goldenberg won the award for Best Delegate in his committee, and senior Clara Hensley got a write up by the conference’s press team highlighting the actual city council resolution that she wrote that was passed this week while we were here!

We’re so proud of our SLAmbassadors, and can’t wait to see what the next group does when they leave for Germany this week!