Growing up in rural Kansas can be a vastly different experience than growing up in New York City, and not just in terms of geography. In a large nation like the U.S., the population differs widely in income levels, values, ideas, ethnicities, religions, languages, you name it. What’s perhaps more interesting than what we don’t have in common, though, is what we do.
American Exchange Project, the country’s first free intercultural domestic exchange program, invites graduating high school seniors to stay with host families in communities dissimilar to their own as a way to foster empathy and combat division. And this year’s crop of participants, roughly 700 teenagers from nearly 40 states, recently got their match letters — which means they now know where they’re off to this summer.
During the first seven days of the two-week exchange, they’ll travel to another locale and immerse themselves in the culture there. Then they’ll head back home and spend the second week introducing their towns and cities to peers from other places. It’s about connecting not just with new and different areas but also with new and different people.
“The father of one of my childhood friends used to say, ‘Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future,’” co-founder David McCullough III told Nice News. “It turns out that’s true for nations and individuals alike. We are divided, unequal, and lonely, and that’s in part because of a lack of social connection.”
He continued: “The purpose of these exchanges is to remedy this phenomenon, to bring a little closer together a large and enormously diverse country through a mind-broadening coming-of-age experience for our nation’s high school seniors.”
For a former participant named Matthew, who traveled from his home in Stamford, Connecticut, to Kilgore, Texas, the experience was unforgettable: “Even after more than a year of college, I still think of that week as the best and most important week of my life.” Stamford has a population of about 140,000; Kilgore’s is around 10% of that.
American Exchange Project was created in 2019 and is meant to be part adventure, part lesson in nonpartisan civic engagement, a chance for young people’s natural curiosity and openness to cultivate connection. Thanks to individual and group donors, like the MacArthur Foundation and Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw’s Hearthland Foundation, it’s entirely free. This year’s cohort is the largest yet, with seven exchange sessions taking place between June and July.
“Under bright stars, over bonfire s’mores, and surrounded by cornfields, I had some of the most eye-opening and interesting conversations of my life that altered my perception of those from rural communities,” said a previous participant named David, who traveled from Palo Alto, California, to Blue Earth, Minnesota. “This experience has changed me in more ways than I’m aware of.”
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