← We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits
We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits
686. Learn, Serve, Explore: How Students of Service Is Shaping the Next Generation of Global Leaders - Amir Samandi
00:24:29
Loading summary
Transcript40 lines
- [00:02]
A
That's the thing about courage, right? Courage is not the absence of fear. It's acting despite the fear. And even though I was afraid at times, it was like, just keep going and surround yourself with the people who encourage you. There were people who were like, man, here's five bucks, here's ten bucks. And those donations, every single one or just the kind word, all of that mattered. So I would say to the, to the founders right now, like, if you believe in your mission, trust the process, do the work. And it's not going to be easy. You got to do the work, but trust the process, keep believing, and then surround yourself with the people that are going to encourage you and maybe even help.
- [00:39]
B
Hey, I'm John.
- [00:40]
C
And I'm Becky.
- [00:41]
B
And this is the We Hear for Good podcast.
- [00:43]
C
Let's get started.
- [00:47]
B
Hey, Becky. What's happening, John?
- [00:49]
C
I got a big smile on my face because we are talking about one of my favorite things, the rising and emerging leaders found in Gen Z. And we are here with the tour de force. Amir Samandi is in the house with us. He is the founder and executive director of Students of Service sos it's based in San Antonio. Hey, to all of our change makers out in San Antonio, they're helping young people become global citizens through this powerful mix of local service and international experiential learning. I like want to sign my kids up for that right now. And it's built around these three pillars. Learn, serve, explore. And if you forget those three, get on YouTube right now because Amir is actually wearing it on his shirt. He is like living the brand right now. SOS starts students right where they are serving their own communities and then expands their worldview through this immersive travel experiences that are held just around the globe. And they've been around since 2014 and they have impacted hundreds of students who've traveled to 22 countries and have created these life changing moments that have that help leaders see themselves in the world so differently, which I am loving. So we're so excited to have Amir on today. We're going to talk about how SOS began and what makes this model so incredibly transformational. And the thing I love the most is why service both at home and abroad is at the heart of everything that SOS does. So, Amir, we are excited to talk about our favorite generation. Welcome to the We Are For Good podcast.
- [02:28]
A
Well, thanks for having me, Becky, and good morning. John, great to see you. I'm happy to walk you through how it started or where do you want to start?
- [02:35]
C
Well, actually I kind of want to start with you because we find that people just fall into this work so often there are very few people that head straight into it. And we're curious about, like, little Amir. What was it like growing up for you, and how did you find your heart into this work?
- [02:52]
A
That's a great question. You know, ethnically, just the background matters, Right. My dad's Persian Iranian. Came over before the road revolution and trained with the U.S. air Force here. At the time, the U.S. and Iran were allies, and he came here to San Antonio, Texas, and met my mom, who is from the Rio Grande Valley, is Mexican American, so we're eighth generation through her lineage as well. And so, you know, South Texas is just kind of in my heritage and in my growing up, in my upbringing, I was kind of bouncing between Houston and the Rio Grande Valley. So, you know, through. Through school, I was in the Houston area, and then in the summers, I would go stay with my grandparents because my parents were working all the time. And so, you know, the culture really is ingrained in me in that way. And so when I graduated high school, I moved to San Antonio because I went to a school here called St. Mary's University. And it just felt like home. And San Antonio was the right combination of, you know, it's a big enough city like Houston. Not as big, but, um, definitely bigger than the Valley. But I definitely had the connection to the culture and the food, of course. Um, so when you. When you grow up eating great Tex Mex, right? Tacos are your love language, you know?
- [04:07]
C
Oh, my gosh. Tacos are. We are for goods, love, language, and coffee, but not together. Yeah.
- [04:14]
A
So that's. That's kind of how. How I ended up here in San Antonio. And I did international relations, ended up doing international relations at St. Mary's University. Um, I came in there not really knowing what I wanted to do in terms of a major. And I saw a flyer up in the university that said there was a study abroad program in London, and I had never been anywhere outside of the country. It was new to me. So I said, I want to do that. And that study abroad experience changed my life. It changed how I saw the world, but more importantly, it changed how I saw myself. And to this day, Lawrence Scott, Dr. Lawrence Scott, he was my roommate in London. We're still best friends today. You know, he's like family to me. And it was. That whole experience just really shaped not just me, but the other people on the trip. And I think we still, you know, a lot of us are still in touch today and still talk to each other. And so it's. It's. It showed me the impact that travel can have on a young person personally.
- [05:12]
B
Yeah, Amir. I mean, I'm seeing my own story through your eyes, too.
- [05:17]
C
A.
- [05:18]
B
A flyer in the hallway changed my whole trajectory. That's how I met Becky in the cot, actually. But, like, on a more Life show, shifting level also of going abroad in college changed my life, and it changed the trajectory for our family and how we wanted our children to see and experience the world. And I just feel that kinship. Like, it. It's a door opening, a sliding door. And I love that you've channeled that into such a legacy of how you're working with students. And so I want to catch up a little bit of your story of. Okay, how do you translate that into this program that you're now running for almost a decade or more than a decade. My gosh. What did it look like to start something like that and then tell us how you're showing in programs today?
- [05:58]
A
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, it's my story's. I would say, not typical in the nonprofit world. I spent a few years working for the State Department after I graduated St. Mary's did my master's at George Washington University, the Elliott School in International Affairs. But I started to reconsider because I really had had this exploration of this idea of how do we get more Americans to see the world? And that was kind of the. The seeds of SOS. You know, I was already starting. I was only 24 years old, but I had this idea that I would. I would take young people through community service and through travel abroad and help them to have a more global perspective. And so I quit my job at the State Department. I had to follow my heart, and I knew that I was onto something. So I came back to San Antonio, took a job as a DoD contractor and worked in the military for a while as well. And I thought, man, I really want to do this nonprofit. But I tried to launch it at 25 years old, and nobody really gave me the time of day. You know, in retrospect, the gray hairs that I have now, I can kind of see why. But at the time, it really kind of just discouraged me. And so I sort of put everything on the shelf, you know, not to go into my personal life, but I had a lot going on there, too. And so it was like, all right, let me. Let me focus. Where can I make impact? And I talked to, actually, Dr. Laurence Scott, the one that I told you about. From London. He said, you know, you got to think about being a teacher. And so I jumped into the classroom to become a classroom teacher. And so, yeah, I became a world geography teacher for sixth grade. And I was in a predominantly low income middle school, predominantly Latino, 87% economically disadvantaged. And one day I'd given an assignment. I remember it was a cold day in February out in this little portable building. The heater didn't always work. And I'd given an assignment. This girl, she comes up to my desk and she sees a picture of the Eiffel Tower. And she said, and she points to it. She goes, sir, what is that? And I said, that's the Eiffel Tower. She goes, oh, that's really pretty. That's cool. Can you take us on a field trip? I said, let me show you where it is on a map. So I pulled down the map. We had one on the wall at the time. This is 2014. And I said, well, that's where it is. And she goes, oh, yeah, I'll never go. I said, no, what are you talking about? Of course you can go. I grew up low income. I was still able to do study abroad. I've been. You could go. I said, teachers can even take students your age. And the whole class looked up at me. All of a sudden, everybody looked up from their desk. Is it really, sir, we'll take us. And so I had that moment, right? So I went to the principal and I said, hey, this is what I would like to do with, with my students. She said, well, we can't do it through the school because of different, you know, district policies and liabilities. She says, but if you started a nonprofit, then, then you could. And I didn't know the first thing about starting a nonprofit, But I had talked to this attorney who had told me, well, you know, for $2,000, I'll get you all set up with your articles of incorporation and all the bylaws and all this stuff. And I'm a teacher. I don't have $2,000 laying around. So I got on GoFundMe. I raised the $2,000 in my kitchen in four days. And since then, we've taken over 600 travelers to 22 different countries. And now we've served over a hundred thousand hours alone here in San Antonio and just changed countless lives. That's the biggest thing. These things, the Learn, Serve, explore, model, just changes lives.
- [09:19]
C
I mean, Amir, I just want to cry because there are so few people in this lifetime that see a window and they just, like, leap through it. And now looking in the rearview mirror of what you've done has gotta be incredibly humbling because I want to get into this just a little bit because you have an amazing alumni base that you have built now who are deeply entrenched in this mission. We've been lifting a ship this year for leaders to focus on how volunteers are the core capacity for mission. You're doing this in real time. So tell us more about how, like where and how these volunteers have helped support you and your org's capacity and the way that you're scaling.
- [10:05]
A
This is revealing. My age too, but a lot of the students are now in their mid-20s and they have jobs and they've completed college. And actually we have three that serve on our board of directors. So I like to say they're now my boss. And I'll tell you a quick story about Christian Valerio. So he is a student that was a student that went to China with us in 2016. And so one of the things that SOS does, and I'll kind of sprinkle in what we do as we go through these stories about these young people. We do sister city ambassador trips, and that was one of the first ones we ever did, and it was to our sister city of Wuxi, China. And so Christian, who goes by Chex is the nickname he had in school, so I still call him Czechs. But he had found out about this opportunity. One of his teachers mentioned it to him. And his family comes from Mexican immigration story. The way he tells it, his grandparents were illiterate and then his parents were able to come to the US and get successful with, with education. And he was the first to go to college in his family. And so, you know, at the time, dreaming big for him was, well, maybe I'll go to University of Houston. And this is as he tells it. But, you know, we took him to. Which is fine, by the way. University of Houston is a great school, but it was the idea that you could think and dream bigger, right? And so this China trip just changed his life completely. And he came back with a, with a newfound confidence, a newfound courage, and ended up getting a full ride scholarship to Notre Dame University.
- [11:35]
C
I'm so proud of you, Jacks.
- [11:37]
A
Which was special to me because when I was in high school, that was where I wanted to go. And it was, you know, I got real close. They flew me out there and everything. I didn't get in right. And so when he got to Notre Dame in front of that golden dome with his mom and his dad, he sent me this picture with his SOS shirt on. And he said that this is what made it possible, that it was his SOS experience helped him to get there. And that to me, that was a fulfillment of something that I didn't get to do. But I'm glad I got to help other young people achieve that dream. So fast forward today. He's a actuary and he's now on our board as our vice chair. And we actually have two other alumni on the board. So Hannah Jones, who also went on that China trip, and Julian Matthews, who did his first trip to Spain. To your question about volunteers, like, none of it would have been possible without all the army of volunteers that came through. So obviously the students are the main participants on any given Saturday. At this point in 2026, we're looking at about 10 to 15 service events a month on average, you know, between 150 volunteers, students out in the community. Right. But in order to do that, I need adult volunteers to help. So it's moms, it's teachers, it's dads, community members, our corporate partnerships. So adults will step up to help as well in different ways. And by the way, for eight years I was a volunteer executive director. I didn't get paid. I was still in the schools. So I was working in the schools for eight years for free as a volunteer ed. I didn't go full time until January of 2023. Today, as of February 17, 2026, we have five employees. We've grown our budget to over a million dollars and we're all full time employees, which is great.
- [13:28]
B
Oh my gosh, what a story, Amir. I mean, it feels like in so many ways, it's like you're just getting started. You finally are being surrounded by the investment and the people power to like really grow this thing. And I think you've had the last decade to, to see the change that's happening in students. What is that putting on you? Like, I mean, what, what is that shaping your view of what the future could hold, seeing all that, this momentum that coming in?
- [13:54]
A
I think we're building the leaders that the world needs right now. And so because we're doing that, because we're giving, equipping them with empathy, equipping them with perspective, equipping them with the knowledge of, of how to, you know, how to work as a team, we, you know, we're, we're preparing them with agency and with hope. I think that's the biggest thing, right? We need hope. And so that's what I see. I See the hope that comes from seeing these young leaders rising. I see the hope that in looking at their potential and what they're going to be doing, what they're already doing, right. To me, I think that's the sense of urgency and the weight that I feel that, like, hey, I need to help make sure that this spreads. And so our goal is to eventually expand outside of San Antonio and to have chapters throughout the country, because I think this model, Learn, Serve, Explore is like, a lot like, you know, how Eat, Pray, Love was like a model that helped one person change individually. I think Learn, Serve, Explore is a model, a mantra that can help change communities.
- [14:53]
B
It's beautiful.
- [14:54]
C
I just think you're hitting on all these things that we have seen when we've explored what Gen Z is capable of. They want purpose, you know, in their work and in their life. They value transparency and equity, and they prefer community over hierarchy. That is the way to move through the world with empathy. You're not just looking straight ahead at your own vision. You're looking around and you're seeing how you can help other people. And I think that these lessons are so much deeper than what the travel imparts here. And I. I also can relate so much to you talking about I didn't get paid for years, which I have really deep feelings about founders powering their missions without getting paid. And I think we have a lot of founders and listeners, leaders that are listening right now. And if you could go back, maybe Amir, and talk to yourself in year one, what would you tell that version of you about sustainability and pace and trust? Would you say to Amir, who's just
- [16:00]
A
starting out, I would tell him to just do the work and trust the process. It's kind of like you kind of go blindly right by faith, in a sense. But doing the work in and of itself had value. I knew that at the time. But if I am able to see 10 years ago what happened today, man, I mean, that would have taken away a lot of doubt. We get it, you know, I mean, but at the same time, I think that's the thing about courage, right? Courage is not the absence of fear. It's acting despite the fear. And even though I was afraid at times, it was like, just keep going and surround yourself with the people who encourage you. There were people who were like, man, here's five bucks, here's ten bucks. I want to see. I'm going to make it. And those donations, every single one or just the kind word, all of that mattered. So I would say to the. To the founders right now. Like, if you believe in your mission, trust the process, do the work. And it's not going to be easy. You got to do the work, but trust the process, keep believing, and then surround yourself with the people that are going to encourage you and maybe even help and make sure that you appreciate those people.
- [17:10]
C
Yep.
- [17:10]
B
I think that you're naming our greatest value around here, which is community is everything. We feel like it's the way to stay in the work. It's infrastructure for not giving up on really hard days, too. So, I mean, we've been talking a lot about clarity and capacity this season, and I'm wondering if you would share a rhythm or something that you put in place that really keeps SOS aligned and sustainable, Something that other nonprofit listeners lead listening could be like, oh, yeah, I could implement that.
- [17:37]
A
Yeah, great question, I think. And that was the cool thing is, like, once I went full time, we had our operations director. Marisa Calder was actually hired before me because it's a long story, but I knew, I knew I had to take her up on it. When I saw that she was available, I put her up first because I thought that was the piece that was needed. I was still willing to work for free at that point. But anyway, that's a whole other story. But when we got together and that was the other magic piece, was again, having the right people on the team. And one of the things that I think every nonprofit does is say, well, how does this advance our mission? Right. Every good nonprofit should focus on an opportunity, a grant, whatever it is, line it up against. How does this advance our mission? I think the second thing we did, and this is, I think I'm going to share this with the world because I think it's, again, it's a better world if we're all doing a better job of what we do. I told the team, we have two rules always. Number one, is this good for kids? An opportunity comes, or somebody asks us, hey, can you guys do this? Or we want this speaker to come and talk to you. Whatever it is, is this good for kids? If yes, then the second question, is it sustainable? You can ask my team, what are the two questions that you guys have to weigh every decision against? Number one, is it good for kids? Number two, is it sustainable?
- [18:59]
C
I think what a guiding light. We talk about going back to our values all the time. And it's like, we can try lots of new things, but those values have got to be unshakable. And I love that you have these anchors in your mission. And I want to know how you've changed as a human being by being around these kids. What have, what have you seen? What, what have they taught you that has fundamentally changed you a lot?
- [19:34]
A
They have, they have made a huge impact on me. Incredibly humbling, incredibly eye opening, honestly, to learn from their perspective and energy. You know, the fact that they're not deterred by all the reasons that every other adult tells you, oh, that'll never work, or, you know, all just the cynicism. Right. I think that's the biggest antidote to cynicism, is being around young people.
- [20:03]
B
Well, Amir, we have. We want to ask you about a moment of philanthropy. It's a story that we asked for from all of our guests. And I mean, you kind of let us in that this has had a crazy story from the beginning of people who believed in this idea. From your first kind of like grassroots organizing to now a million dollar budget and a team of five. What's a moment of philanthropy that has really stuck with you in that journey? Maybe a moment of generosity.
- [20:29]
A
So we have a program called Make It Happen where students could submit their own ideas to make the community better. And we walk them through kind of A Program Management 101. Like, you know, what's the budget? What are you hoping to accomplish? And so there's a ton of stories I could pull from just on that alone. But I think about a young lady named Tiana. This was way back in 2016, probably 17, whenever Flint, Michigan was having the water crisis. And she was genuinely concerned with the people of Flint and wanted to do something and said, I want to do a make it happen and I want to raise money or send water to Flint. Drinking water. These people are suffering. Now we're in San Antonio. It's the opposite side of the country. Like, we're close to. We're close to Mexico, they're close to Canada. And she did the work and I helped. We helped her through the Make It Happen initiative. And we were able to send money over to. We realized that money was probably more helpful than trying to ship bottled water as we did the work together. And, you know, through Tiana's efforts, you know, a lot of money was sent over to Flint, Michigan, people we don't even know, right? Just to show them and to show the world like we care. Right? People care. I think that's what people want to see when they're going hard times. And just like here in San Antonio, in this area, the Hill country, we had the tragic floods that happened back in July and So we saw an outpouring of support from around the country. And I think continuing to teach that mindset of giving back and caring for your neighbor, I think that's really critical, and I think that's the rewarding part of, you know, the work I do with SOS Is that we're passing the torch to the next generation.
- [22:08]
B
Yeah.
- [22:09]
C
I just think you hit on something really important, and it's like people just want to care. They want to know that people care, and they want to care for their neighbor. And so I get goosebumpy when I think about what you're going to do and what this mighty nonprofit will do over the next 12 years and the next 12 years after that, and the way that you start to open up the world to students and you create a kinder, more vibrant, more interconnected world. And to me, that is the beauty of what we do. So I just fundamentally want to thank you for the. For taking a chance, for leaping so that others could leap. And we end so much of our conversations with a one good thing. And we're wondering what your one good thing is that you would leave with this audience. It could be a quote. Maybe it's a mantra you live by. What's staying with you today?
- [23:04]
A
I think what I try to do is elevate others. Right. So, you know, whatever it is, help the people around you be better. Help the people around you. They have a goal, they have a dream. Help them. Help them to live that. Because when they're their best self, then the world is a better place. Like every time somebody's living their best life and going through less trauma and pain and sees more connectivity and more empathy and more community, then we have a better world. And so, to me, it's like, elevate the people around you to be their best selves. And that makes the world a better place.
- [23:36]
B
Amir, everyone listening is going to want to connect with you and follow your organization. What's the best way to find y' all online?
- [23:42]
A
So our website is sossanantonio.org and we're actually about to unveil a new website. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. But anyway, for now, it'll stay the same. URL sos san antonio.org and then I am on LinkedIn. SOS is on LinkedIn. We're students of service SOS and I am Amir Samandi.
- [24:06]
B
Such an honor.
- [24:07]
C
Thank you for the hard work that you're doing. You're building it one student at a time, one experience at a time. Keep making that ripple. Go and I have to just also say that I can tell that it's a mission of love for you. And your kindness and your humanity is deeply felt. So we are rooting for you. Keep going, Amir.
- [24:27]
A
Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm honored.