Sedona Red Rock High School junior Fernando Quisumbing reached into his bag on Thursday, March 26, which had the words “Bag of Holding” embroidered on the side, and pulled out a small notebook and flipped through the filled pages in the first half.

In it, he had a bunch of drawings he’s worked on when he’s had the time.

He pulled out a different notebook, which had different creative story or role-playing game ideas in it.

“If I need to escape, I can jot stuff down, either in this or pull out a Google doc at home,” he said. “I like papers, because I get to draw in here as well.”

Writing is one of his favorite things to do, he said, whenever he has the time.

He’s currently a full-time student at SRRHS, working concurrently to get his associates degree through Yavapai College and volunteers about 15 hours a week at Community Library Sedona or with other Rotary programs.

“We’re doing state testing, meaning that I don’t have any class time during the day to do my college work,” he said on March 26.

It means during those high work weeks, he doesn’t have time to do his normal weekly Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game.

His work has begun to pay off, though. After he attended the Rotary Youth Leadership Award Camp in January, the Rotary Club of Sedona Village and the Sedona Sister Cities organization announced Quisumbing in the running for the Sister Cities International Summit in Washington, D.C.

Quisumbing is one of three Arizonans chosen to attend the summer summit.

Sister Cities Summit

“Everyone that met him is impressed with how bright and articulate he is for a junior in high school,” President of the Sedona Sister Cities Association Chuck Marr said.

He said he’s excited for meeting new people and the social aspect of the summit.

“It’s out of 50, which means that, like, that’s a classroom, and I can get to know a classroom over a week, and that’s something I’m really excited about,” Quisumbing said.

The week will include breakout rooms, seminars and tours around D.C.

He said his guess is the seminars will mostly be about citizen diplomacy and how to conduct one’s self with others.

“We went to the high school and asked them to make a recommendation for one or more of their students that they thought might be a good fit that could gain from the experience back in Washington,” Marr said.

Sister Cities International’s goal is to have at least one student from every state, Marr said.

“That really wasn’t possible,” Marr said. “So, this year, actually they picked three from our state that are going.”

Students will meet with U.S. State Department officials, diplomats and ambassadors.

“And they meet with the folks that are in the head of Sister Cities International and learn more about what is going on worldwide, not just in the U.S., in terms of areas of peace,” Marr said. “Again, that’s a major focus of Sister Cities International.”

Marr said an anonymous donor gave Sister Cities the money to cover most of the registration costs, and the local did the same last year for Sedona student Khrystian Cordova, the Arizona representative at the national conference.

Journalism Conference

Quisumbing was also independently nominated by his photography teacher Cindy Wilmer to attend a journalism conference over the summer, also held in D.C.

“It’s editors and writers and journalists from top platforms like Washington Post or New York Times, CNN, ABC, FOX, sometimes,” he said. “It’s a wide variety, which is nice, because I don’t believe that really caters any one way or another.”

Quisumbing said what he wants to do for a living after school is to help people, so he’s been mainly thinking about social work.

“Even though I hadn’t felt inclined towards journalism in the first place, writing about anything is hugely important,” he said.
“Possibly anything you can do, whether it be report, whether it be just a record of the day.”

This conference focuses on leadership, Quisumbing said, which is why he thinks he was nominated. He’s very active in Rotary events, in which he’s normally some sort of leader, and also takes initiatives in the extracurriculars he’s part of, like D&D.

“I believe [the conference] culminates in something like an hour-long session, or a one-on-one, with somebody of our choosing,” Quisumbing said.