A world of purpose and a career rooted in service
- Laurie Dionne Babcock
- Alumni
- Contributors: James Greco, Photos
6 – minute read
When Andrea Bedoya (’20, political science) was stationed in rural Cambodia, her nearest fellow Peace Corps volunteer was a two-hour bike ride away. From October 2022 through February 2024, she spent her days teaching English to a classroom of 60 students in record-breaking heat. It was challenging, a little isolating — and exactly where her journey from Florida Gulf Coast University had prepared her to be.
What began as a leap into FGCU’s Model United Nations in her sophomore year evolved into a globe-trotting career rooted in service. Now she’s focused on the next step — graduate school in New York.
Finding her path at FGCU
For Bedoya, choosing FGCU shaped everything that followed. But the Gainesville native didn’t arrive with a clear roadmap to international service. Her financial aid package was the best she was offered, but something else clicked when she toured FGCU.
“I just really loved the campus. I thought it was gorgeous and there was a real environmental focus, which I really liked.”
In her sophomore year, Bedoya joined FGCU’s Model United Nations club. The student-run group aims to deepen understanding of the United Nations and international affairs through realistic simulations of U.N. committee sessions. It helps students engage with global issues, sharpen critical thinking, public speaking and collaboration skills by participating in competitive forums at state and national levels.
“I had no real-life experience in debate or discussing international relations in a more formal setting. So I joined Model U.N. not exactly knowing what I would get myself into. After a few conferences, I knew I had an interest in this, and it confirmed that I was in the right major.”
Hosting the club’s annual conference for area high school students helped her discover her passion for global service and international engagement, she says. When the Southwest Florida Model United Nations conference happened again last March, Bedoya came full circle and returned to campus as keynote speaker. More than 340 students from across the region gathered at FGCU for the 33rd annual event hosted in partnership with the Naples Council on World Affairs.
Service beyond the classroom
As Bedoya became more involved outside the classroom as an undergrad, her interests and experiences broadened. She interned with the Southwest Florida Coalition Against Human Trafficking and worked with Immokalee farmworkers to help them understand their rights. Conducting sea turtle conservation research in Ghana with FGCU faculty and students also influenced her perspective on service and shaped her understanding of effective fieldwork.
“Most of our research was based off interviews with local fishermen. It taught me that any research you conduct, if the community you’re interacting with is the backbone of that area, you’re going to have much stronger and accurate results,” Bedoya says.
During the monthlong research trip to Ghana, she also participated in a faculty-led service project, planting mangroves with local schoolchildren. “The students were definitely in charge in that one. We had a lot to learn from them.”
Thanks to that experience, community-first engagement has become a throughline in her work.
Language, culture, connection
Bedoya’s passion for global engagement is also personal. Fluent in Spanish, she spent summers with family in Peru and Colombia and attended eighth grade in Bogotá.
“I was the jaded teenager who didn’t want to speak Spanish, and my parents said, ‘You absolutely cannot lose this language.’”
After graduation, she taught English in Seville, Spain, before joining the Peace Corps in Cambodia, where she taught at a secondary school and led an after-school English club.
“I was teaching my classes in the local language, which sounds really great, but there were hiccups along the way,” she says. “Making sure I was learning the Khmer language correctly, but also teaching the students correct English.”
Building communities through service
Bedoya applies the lessons she’s learned along the way in her current role as a deputy director at buildOn, a nonprofit that has partnered with communities worldwide to build more than 3,000 schools and inspire over 2 million volunteer hours among U.S. students.
“I have a really cool job, honestly. BuildOn does two big things: One is building schools in developing countries, and we work with low-income areas around the U.S. to do service-learning projects in their own community.”
Bedoya manages recruitment, retention and cultural training for students in the Bronx and international partner communities. Her work has taken her to Guatemala, Nicaragua and Senegal and reinforces a key principle: Impact endures when communities are partners rather than recipients.
“When the local community takes part in building the school instead of just being gifted the physical structure, students stay in school longer because the families prioritize education a little more when their effort went into building this actual structure.”
She sees similar transformations among the high school students she works with.
“A lot of the students we work with in the U.S., if they end up in college, they’re going to be first-generation students. With these service projects they do, they learn a ton of transferable skills and they really see their value and understand their importance in their own community.”
That philosophy echoes the foundation she built at FGCU.
“What you learn in the classroom is great. A service project, like with a local nonprofit, is where it’s all applied, and you leave with all these really great skills for the workforce.”
Justin Fitzgerald, FGCU’s director of community engagement in Service-Learning & Civic Engagement, agrees.
“FGCU is one of the only public universities in the country to require service-learning for all undergraduate students,” he says. “This unique requirement means that no one graduates from FGCU without the No. 1 thing employers and graduate schools are looking for — experience.”
In addition to individual and group service-learning opportunities, FGCU offers more than 300 classes each year integrating service-learning guided by trained faculty.
“We’re so thankful to have students like Andrea and many others who continue contributing to the betterment of the community after graduating,” Fitzgerald says. “The university exists because the community advocated for it to be created. FGCU opens doors and helps students adopt an attitude of continuous exploration and ongoing service to the world around them.”
Starting her next chapter
In August, Bedoya will begin a master’s program in international political economy and development at Fordham University in the Bronx. Even as she looks ahead, her path remains grounded in the same mission that first took shape at FGCU — service that is culturally aware and globally minded.
“It’s very bittersweet because that means my time is coming to a close at buildOn. But I’m super excited. I feel like it’s a perfect next step in my career.”