Carpe Diem's Mission
Inspiring growth and transformation through experiential education, community and intercultural exchange
Philosophy
Through community service, adventure travel, language study, home stays, and authentic cultural exchange our students receive insight into themselves while cultivating a sense of love and understanding for the areas in which they are traveling and the people with whom they interact. As an organization we take a stand for integrity, decency, mother earth, peace, and for living without compromising our own personal integrity.
- We believe that we are the best at what we do and take pride in our ability to never settle for "good."
- We believe that volunteering is the best way to bridge the cultural divide; that by working side by side with the locals, something is exchanged that words simply cannot communicate.
- We believe in the power of community. At the beginning of every semester we will sit down together and get clear about everyone's individual reasons for doing this program. From those reasons we will design a set of agreements that we want to live with throughout the program. It is the power of the students to change those by consensus at any time.
- We believe that everybody grows by having their comfort zones pushed in manageable amounts. Our leaders will at times push everyone's comfort zones with assignments and activities that they believe will help each student grow.
- We believe that the international experience is far more culturally authentic and safer without the use of drugs and alcohol.
- We believe in the empowerment of each student. Our leaders will be asking students to organize their own portion of the program, complete with managing committees, budgets, travel, food, accommodation, and activities. Everyone will at some point work with the leaders to organize a portion of your own semester.
Carpe Diem's Logo
Our Logo is one that was created by a local artist in Ecuador and currently hangs in the office. The logo is intended as a holistic representation of the potential of mankind: sort of an integration of man, earth and spirit and is not meant to exclude any religion but rather link the most common elements of all of the world's religion.
The bottom half of the logo is representative of the "Mitad del Mundo," or the center of the world. Currently, at the exact equator are ruins from a pre-Incan civilization and an obelisk that you'll see represented by the pyramid in our logo. The energy of Pachamama, or the Earth Mother, is represented by the earth that is cradled by the pyramid, and the energy of Papa Inti, or Father Sun, is represented by the sun at the top of the design. There are two main waves coming off either side of the sun that are representative of the shaman's shawl and intended to represent support for all that follow a spiritual path. The five triangles that surround the sun are representative of the five elements, and embedded throughout the design are all of the astrological signs.
Vision
"The unexamined life is not worth living"
We firmly believe that the greatest treasure in all of us is the knowledge that we already have everything we could ever need. Our goal as educators and mentors is to challenge and encourage our students to consciously step into adulthood and global citizenship with both personal and social responsibility and unbridled enthusiasm.
Global Awareness with Carpe Diem Education - What Inspires Us to Do the Work We Do
Our experiential education semester programs have been running internationally since 1998, when we first launched a semester in Central America. Since then our programs have grown to include East Africa, Southeast Asia, Australia & the South Pacific, India, South America, Brazil, and Indigenous America. By taking youth out of their home-countries and out of their comfort zones, our programs offer students an educational alternative to the traditional classroom environment.
Between the ages of 17 & 21, young adults are faced with three big and potentially difficult transitions: high school to college, family to independence, and adolescence to adulthood. Fundamental questions about identity arise with a sense of urgency, and allowing time to wrestle with these questions and search for answers can lead to a better foundation for our life - one based on integrity, fulfillment, personal evolution, and creativity. We feel that life works better when we get to know ourselves better: our minds, our bodies, our feelings, our relationship to the sacred, our energetic being, and our social awareness.
Therefore, we have created a far more profound alternative to sixteen uninterrupted years in the classroom - the chance for real exploration and challenge; a journey leading to rich life experience, increased perspective, and the beginnings of wisdom. In fact, there may be no better time for an intentional examination that asks the deeper personal questions running parallel to this age: Who am I? What do I want to do with my life? What matters to me? How do I choose to define success?
Travel into unknown inner or outer terrain can be uncomfortable; the path Carpe Diem students choose is sometimes confusing, disorienting, or overwhelming. But it is equally expansive, exhilarating, valuable, and liberating. The journey into adulthood makes much more sense if we can broaden the context of our inquiry - and by doing so with a group of fellow seekers and two experienced overseas educators will only enhance the experience. In our role as educators, we are continually amazed by the power of community and intentional travel experiences to facilitate personal and social growth and a newfound identity within the context of this globalized world.
What makes Carpe Diem unique is its commitment to its staff and their own growth, and by extension, the growth of our students. How we empower our staff gets modeled and transferred to our students in a way that encourages pushing of comfort zones, but support throughout the process. We often say as an organization that the greatest foul a leader or any teacher can commit is to expect a student to be anywhere other than where they are: We as a society must begin with what we have, and build forward rather than express disappointment for the things we don't have. The same is true with our students and this is why we purposefully create student-to-staff ratios that allow for deep personal connections with each student. Furthermore, these are the very reasons why on Carpe Diem programs we travel every two weeks or so -- it creates an opportunity for students not only to be exposed to a variety of different cultural values that all "successfully live this one wild and precious life," but also such that every student is given an opportunity to take on a different leadership role within the program.
Carpe Diem has always strived to be at the forefront of experiential education. Our desire to create more complete human beings and ever-more dynamic programs is a drive that dates all the way back to when we were part of LEAPNow and among the first to organize group semester programs in the developing world. We are now working to find common ground between traditional higher-education and Gap Year Experiences through our partnership with Portland State University and the foundation of our non-profit sister organization, The International Carpe Diem Foundation (ICDF). Through PSU, our students are able to take advantage of the incredible transformative experience that is a Carpe Diem program while receiving university credit. This allows our students to explore their true talents and dreams, to engage in the creative and dynamic in order to awaken the mind, body, and spirit, and to nurture a healthy relationship between theory and practice - all without "losing" the academic semester.
As an organization, Carpe Diem has also embraced our role as an agent of positive change in the world of sustainable international development. To better understand our influences and take more responsibility within the regions we explore, we have established satellite offices in Thailand and Peru with the goal of creating mutually beneficial relationships with our local partner organizations. While our commitment to the journey of our students and groups remains unmatched, we also recognize the importance in today's world of informed work in the regions that host us, and to work with local organizations to create positive change. Thus strengthened, these relationships, based on equality and shared goals, help to manifest a stronger and more powerful cross-cultural exchange that is the foundation of our experiential education programs.
In addition to creating exceptional educational programs and forging ever-stronger ties with the local academic community, we take great pride in the International Carpe Diem Foundation (ICDF), a 501.c.3 non-profit organization that works with students from low-income families to offer scholarships for international experiential education programs. Scholarship recipients demonstrate a high financial need, leadership within their communities and a commitment to social justice, personal development, and global citizenship. To complement the experiences abroad, we also partner with local artists & trade unions for apprenticeship positions, as well as with regional universities to provide a longer-term vision for educational opportunities available to each individual ICDF scholarship recipient.
As an organization, Carpe Diem believes in the following:
- The power of authentic cultural exchange
- Our model for educating is experiential rather than purely theoretical
- The importance of building community within our group as well as with our cultural partners
- Growth through pushing one's comfort zones
- The empowerment of each student to safely and confidently travel independently anywhere in the world
- The values of responsibility and accountability
- The creative spark and potential for tremendous social change that lie in each of us
- The growth and inherent value of every student, that every student returns home a changed and more aware individual and global citizen
