Social Voyagers was founded by Andy Stuart, Emilia Cerrillo, and Rachel Andres. In 2016, after several trips with students to Antigua, Guatemala, to work in hospitals and build schools on service trips, Emilia and Andy worked together to investigate service-learning. This deep dive into the ways students work on a collective project for the common good and the ways this work can have an impact on teachers and students resulted in the formation of a center on the Menlo-Atherton High School campus dedicated to community engagement and service. The student group leading this venture eventually partnered with the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford University to learn the guidelines and values of high-quality local and international service. This group of powerful students now focuses on service in our own community, and we realized that an international experience would fit well with these programs. Based on our research, we set out to build a powerful and high-quality international service-learning experience. In July of 2019, the first trip was to the small village of Sámara, in the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica. We traveled again to this same village in February 2020. Rachel and Andy led a trip to Peru in 2017 to visit Cusco, the Sacred Valley, and Machu Picchu. Rachel was organized and passionate; a partnership was born for future trips.  Realizing the integration of service-learning, leadership/group process, and health and wellness created a great theme for a trip with high school students, Social Voyagers was born.

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