Flover approached the Latin America Region Leadership Team with a proposal to strengthen Student Chapters throughout the region, the AAPG Sister Chapter Program. The following is a description of a Sister Chapter Experience between universities in Colombia and Argentina.

The AAPG Sister Chapter Program is an initiative connecting leaders from veteran and new chapters in order to provide mentoring and the exchange of resources and ideas. In my opinion, this Program is the best way to encourage international and/or national cooperation through student contacts, which later become professional connections.

The Sister Chapter Program stems from a successful experience between Universidad Industrial de Santander UIS (Colombia) and Universidad Nacional de La Plata UNLP (Argentina) Chapter, whose presidents met at the Latin American Imperial Barrel Award (IBA) competition in Lima, Peru last April.

The UNLP team members—all girls!—were excited about having a student chapter, but they did not know where to begin. They did not know who invite for a lecture or what they could do to promote the AAPG Membership at their school. We started off by introducing them to the UIS Student Chapter Structure and how we work. We told them it is important to have a plan, so each chapter should have a schedule with some regular activities that they could do each week, month or semester. Having a set structure makes it much easier to think and develop other ideas.

Also, we shared with her some activities that we did the last year with the UIS chapter. We showed them our mid- and end-year report and helped them to think about new, fresh ideas. We also provided ideas for promoting the AAPG Membership. The UNLP leaders agreed, like we that students all over the world should know about the amazing opportunities that come with AAPG membership, and that Chevron offers students free support.

Finally, we shared our vision called the AAPG Partnership. AAPG Partnership is just an idea, like a dream. It is the way that you can talk with anybody and share with this person who you are, who you plan to be, and the path that you plan to take in order to be that person you want to be. For members of the UIS chapter, our path includes AAPG. AAPG believes in people, believes in every one of its members and, most importantly, believes in the fact that everyone can do one little great thing for the community. This is what we value on our team at UIS.

The UNLP representatives understand this concept, and, this makes us really happy. We saw the girls again at ICE Cartagena in September and had a chance to hear about all they have done. The UNLP Chapter is growing up, and that is very gratifying for us.

During ICE, we discussed setting up some Skype lectures to feature distinguished speakers and students from both universities. We strengthened our partnership, and now these girls from UNLP are our best friends in the world.

Now that UNLP is going strong, we are looking for another chapter to mentor. UNLP soon will be helping other chapters too.

We hope that sharing our Sister Chapter experience will help inspire other Chapters to do the same. It is always good to share new and fresh ideas.

If your Chapter is strong and healthy, consider mentoring another group that is just starting. If you could use some help, feel free to contact us. We are always happy to meet new people and to help student make their chapter the best it can be.