Student Spotlight: Upper School Student Eva V. ’27 Wins 2025-2026 Ambassador Award for Excellence in Community Service

“Getting the Ambassador Award felt less like a culmination and more like a checkpoint,” Eva said. “It told me the hours I'd put in weren't going unnoticed, but honestly, what it changed most was my sense of accountability. If people are going to point to you as someone who represents service well, you start holding yourself to that even when no one's watching.”

As the founder of The Bush School’s Middle School Model United Nations (MUN) Club, a member of the Upper School MUN, and a lead student ambassador, Eva has developed crucial skills in diplomacy, negotiation, critical thinking, public speaking, writing, and research. She wears many hats that have contributed to her service hours efforts, including lending a hand at numerous MUN Northwest conferences and leading the Bush Campus Stewardship Club, which she also founded. 

The Ambassador Award provided Eva with a Service Impact Resume, which she can use for future career opportunities and college applications, as well as a series of materials to continue amplifying the direct impact of youth service. 

“I don't think of community service as something separate from my own interests, like I'm stepping outside my life to help people who are fundamentally different from me,” Eva shared. “It's more that I see myself as embedded in a set of relationships I didn't choose but am responsible for anyway. Community relations matter because institutions tend to talk at the people they serve instead of with them, and that gap is where trust breaks down. A lot of what I've learned from Model United Nations and being an admissions ambassador is that representing something well means actually listening first.”

In addition to assisting MUN at various conferences, Eva also participated in other volunteer activities, such as helping set up a USMCA Round Table during her internship at the Pacific Northwest Economic Region in January. On Saturday, April 18, and Sunday, April 19, she supported thirty Middle School students during their first attendance at the KINGMUN MUN Conference at the Hilton Motif Seattle. Seven Bush students were recognized for their performance at the conference, an incredible record!

“Working with the Middle School students was honestly so rewarding as someone who started Model UN when I was around their age,” Eva said. “Seeing them go from being nervous, first-time delegates to excelling in debate was so amazing." 

At Bush, students from Kindergarten through Twelfth Grade experience the joys of building community relations through a variety of opportunities, such as lending a hand to youth at Teen Feed, beautifying Seattle’s countless green spaces, and volunteering their time to residents at Aegis Living. In the Upper School, there has been a growing focus on community engagement, with students now required to earn community engagement credits to graduate, starting in the fall. Eva’s actions exemplify what Bush hopes the new Community Engagement program will instill in students: self-motivation and commitment to cultivating community.