how can i write a cucumber test for validating presence of a div which gets populated using AJAX?

Question

the scenario is such where on select of a value from drop-down a div (#participant-wrapper) is populated via an ajax call:

And I select "Buddy Program" from "development_programs"
Then I should see "Buddy Names" within "#participant-wrapper"

I don't want to use sleep as i think it is not efficient and there should be a better way.