by Tom Berich, Luminari Manager of Operations
Recently, Tom Berich, Operations Manager for Luminari sat and talked with Dominic Panucci, Branch Director for the Northern Area Boys and Girls Club in Pittsburgh. Dominic’s history with Luminari goes all the way back to the very first camp that Luminari offered, the highly popular and inspirational I Want To Be An Ambassador! camp. Click here to listen to the full interview!
TOM: Dominic, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today.
DOMINIC: Thanks Tom, thanks for reaching out and coming down, me and me.
TOM: Dominic let’s talk a little bit about your journey to the Boys and Girls Club right now. Let’s start off with where you’re originally from.
DOMINIC: I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, primarily in the Carnegie area. Went to Chartiers Valley, and graduated there in 2011. And then I went to Robert Morris University, and I graduated in December of 2015. But my journey with Luminari actually started with Boys and Girls Club, oddly enough.
I’ve been at Boys and Girls Clubs since I was six years old. I was a kid at the one in Carnegie. Learned how to throw a football, play basketball, had my first part-time job there. And during my senior year in high school, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Western Pennsylvania received four scholarships from Luminari to allow four seniors to attend its very first I Want to be an Ambassador! program.
I was selected as one of the four seniors to go and attend this week-long program. At the time it was at the University of Pittsburgh down at the cathedral and it was an unbelievable week-long experience that I had and I ended up taking what I learned from Luminari that week and applied it as my senior project that year. So it was technically the summer, but I reached out to Hilda, and said, I want to do a smaller version of this as my senior project. And she was like, absolutely, let’s do it! So I teamed up with her and we did a senior project where we actually took about 15 eighth graders to DC, and they got to go to, I believe, to two embassies at the time and meet a couple ambassadors. It was really cool.
TOM: So this didn’t come to you directly through Chartiers Valley then?
DOMINIC: It was actually through the Boys and Girls Club. It was probably the summer of 2010, going into my senior year. Because we did the program and then I did my senior project.
TOM: Is there anything from that particular diplomacy camp that stands out?
DOMINIC: So one of the things that was really cool was – the first half of the camp we had some amazing guest speakers come in, talk about diplomacy, how we communicate, different cultures, different languages. But then it was taking the classroom element and then applying it to the real world by taking a trip down to D.C. where we went to three embassies. I know Sri Lanka was one of them. The other two are escaping my mind at the moment, but we got to go to the embassies, met the ambassadors of those embassies. And it was such a surreal experience! It’s one thing to talk about in a classroom. It’s another to go talk about it and then go see it in real life and go meet the people from those countries and shake their hands and ask them questions about what they do, how they do it, what’s their culture like.
The concept for I Want to be an Ambassador was How do I be an ambassador? But not just an ambassador for your country. The skills we were learning were how to be an ambassador for anything… for yourself, your family, your community that you represent, etc.
TOM: Let’s expand on that. What kind of experiences and skills did you learn through Luminari that might affect what you do on a day-to-day basis with the Boys and Girls Club?
DOMINIC: To give you an idea of what I do day-to-day. I’m the lead person at my facility, I’m overseeing budgets, I’m overseeing staff, I’m overseeing the programs, the kids, the parents, and then there’s the backend stuff, working with my administration team, my advancement team and we’re promoting and advertising everything that we were doing. But the skills that I learned at the I Want to be an Ambassador! camp was how do I communicate with parents? How do I communicate with kids? How am I building relationships with community partners? That way we can have some amazing programs for our youth here in the area. And how am I working with the inter-political systems of Boys and Girls Club itself? If I want a certain thing to happen in my club, I have to make sure I run it through the correct channels. I have to convince my supervisors. “Hey, this is what I want and here’s why I want it,” or “Here’s why I need it.” And those were all the skills that I learned just through that one week program at Luminari.
TOM: With all of that in mind, registration is currently open for the I Want to be an Ambassador! camp. What might kids need to know if they want to apply for this?
DOMINIC: The one thing I would say is if you’re on the fence…don’t be on the fence! Do it even if you’re not sure. Because like I said, the skills that you’re learning, you can apply to everyday life. You can apply to any job that you’re doing. I work in a non-profit world working with kids every single day and the stuff that I learned from that camp so many years ago still applies today!
For more information on the I Want to be an Ambassador!, diplomacy camp, or any of the other summer camps that Luminari offers (MusicMakers! and Camp Delicious!), including the financial aid and scholarships that are available to really any student, please visit luminari.org.
