AYUDA 2025 Campo Amigo Program

Hi! I am Luke Garvey, a junior at Brookline High School. This year, I’m a first year volunteer for AYUDA (American Youth Understanding Diabetes Abroad). AYUDA is an awesome non-profit that operates under the motto of diabetes education, and how education is just as important as insulin, the key treatment of diabetes. AYUDA works with a local partner, Aprendiendo a Vivir (“Leaning to live” in English), and I, along with a group of volunteers, will travel and create a camp in the Dominican Republic for 3 weeks this summer. At the camp we incorporate beneficial practices of diabetes management, clearing misconceptions, and creating sustainable diabetes habits, while also showing the children how they can live with diabetes, not for it, and how they are more than their condition. 

The mission of AYUDA particularly resonates with me, as I have lived with diabetes for 13 years now. Participating in this volunteer work will also have a critical effect on me—it will be important for me to understand the realities of different people’s experiences with the condition, and the extent to which education is important in its management. I have been really lucky to have an awesome support system, and I think working to establish a support system in a community that needs it, and making personal connections to individual children is really important work. 

Money donated is integral to the functions of the program, and any amount is greatly appreciated!

Thank you so much for donating!