Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller presented Ryan McKee ’25 with the city’s Youth Volunteer of the Year Award in recognition of his work with refugee organizations Immigrant and Refugee Resource Village of Albuquerque (IRRVA), UMOJA, and AMIGOS de las Americas.
Ryan began volunteering as a tutor through the Academy but soon recognized the need to create more customized tutoring for IRRVA and better fundraising; he set up QR codes to make it easy to donate, created posters, and handled advertising. He helps Spanish-speaking refugees at UMOJA with driver’s ed and provides other ESL instruction, and in Summer 2023, he participated in a service project in rural Costa Rica.