At first glance, Madelyn Castro and Paul Zeferino appear to be worlds apart.
While Castro, 18, grew up in Palo Alto, home of Stanford University in the heart of Silicon Valley, Zeferino, 19, hails from Muskogee, home of the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame in a region rich in Native American tribes. history Muskogee’s median household income is only one-fifth of Palo Alto’s and has three times the poverty rate. Castro is headed to Northeastern University in the fall, while Zeferino will begin his post-secondary journey at Oklahoma City Community College.
But a week after meeting, the teenagers realized that their differences didn’t really matter.
“Paul and I became very close,” Castro said. “And I think that’s because we were able to put our politics aside to get to know each other.”
Paul Zeferino, 19, of Oklahoma, and John Miller, 17, of Palo Alto, visit the Musee Mecanique in San Francisco, Calif., on Tuesday, July 11, 2023, as part of the American Exchange Project . The program gives young Americans from different parts of the country a chance to meet in hopes of uniting a divided nation. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
Castro and Zeferino are part of the American Exchange Project, a program that sends high school students into communities unlike any they’ve seen before. By connecting teenagers with peers from opposite ends of the political spectrum, the project is betting on students to bridge the country’s growing ideological divides.
“We often feel that America is very polarized and if you have different ideologies, it’s almost like you can’t even try to get along,” said Alexis Chiu, an 18-year-old from Palo Alto visiting West Jordan. , Utah, in early August. “But through this experience, I realized that despite our differences, we are almost all the same.”
Fourteen of those students landed in Palo Alto last week, not only from Muskogee, but also from Dodge City, Kansas; Paris, Texas; Mission, Montana and other locations across the country. They were met by their teenage counterparts: Palo Alto natives who, sometime this summer, are visiting a new pocket of the country on their own.
From June to August, 350 high school students travel to new cities, towns and communities in 32 states to soak up the local culture. They’ll be panning for gold in Montana, cheering on a rodeo in Nebraska, and for some, seeing the ocean for the first time in Santa Cruz.
David McCullough III, co-founder of the American Exchange Project, brought a group of high school students from around the country, including Ella Brown of Pennsylvania, left, and My’Asia Ainsworth of Texas, to visit the Ghiradelli Square in San Francisco, Tuesday. , July 11, 2023. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
“They can learn what it’s like to grow up both where they are and all the places other kids come from,” said David McCullough III, who founded the program in 2019.
This does not mean that students shy away from their differences. Zeferino, for example, couldn’t believe the number of electric vehicles on the road, or the number of items he was expected to throw in the recycling bin. Malachi Zeairs, an 18-year-old from Kingsport, Tennessee, was surprised at how few signs of Donald Trump he saw in the windows of Palo Alto and the pride flags he saw instead. And Jaxon Pond, an 18-year-old from Meridian, Idaho, said he was overwhelmed by the amount of wealth around him and that people didn’t seem to realize how rich he really was.
Some of these differences were more difficult to resolve than others. On a camping trip to Santa Cruz, the teenagers talked about gun control, a discussion that almost every student felt was one of the most difficult they had ever had together. Victoria Senderzon, an 18-year-old from Palo Alto, said she was surprised by how many members of her group had been directly affected by gun violence but still wanted to own a gun.
Despite this, Senderzon listened, and felt that those on the other side of the debate listened.
“We realized that we’re almost all living the same life in different places,” Pond said. “We all live in the same country, even though we are from everywhere. And we’ve all had the same experiences. Just in different ways.”
Justin Vasquez, 18, of San Angelo, Texas, visits Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, Calif., on Tuesday, July 11, 2023, as part of the American Exchange Project. The program gives young Americans from different parts of the country a chance to meet in hopes of uniting a divided nation. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
The idea for the American Exchange Project was born out of a 7,000-mile road trip McCullough took in 2016. He was just 22 at the time, but something about that jaunt, which took him from his liberal Boston suburb to the South Dakota fields. , stuck. He was already concerned about division in America, and for years after he got home, McCullough wondered if something from his trip could be used to help the country find common ground.
Eventually, he landed on a cross-cultural exchange, where students are hosts one week and visitors another week. It is a model that has been used internationally for decades, the first of which emerged from the ashes of the First and Second World Wars to promote understanding between conflict-torn countries. Later, there were programs like Fulbright, America’s flagship international exchange for academics, and Seeds for Peace, which began by taking Israeli and Palestinian youth to a summer camp in Maine.
Now, the US needs a dose of that diplomacy. A Pew Research Center survey last summer found that between 2016 and 2022, Republicans and Democrats held increasingly negative views of the opposing party; with 72% of Republicans saying Democrats are more dishonest and immoral than they are, and 63% to 64% of Democrats say the same about their counterparts across the aisle.
The exchange program gives teenagers the opportunity to see people beyond these stereotypes. Zeferino, who plans to vote for former President Donald Trump in 2024, described his hometown as “do or die Republican.” At first, I was a little worried about setting foot in Palo Alto, where President Biden won handily in the last election. But to his surprise, Zeferino said he felt welcomed by his teammates, and feels many will be lifelong friends.
“Everybody comes from different political backgrounds, and that can make everybody feel divided,” Zeferino said. “But coming here, we realized: everyone has different opinions, but that doesn’t make us like them any less.”
A group of teenagers from the American Exchange Project pose for a group shot in Ghirardelli Square at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, Tuesday, July 11, 2023. The program offers the next generation of young Americans from different parts of the country the opportunity to share perspectives. hoping to unite a divided nation. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
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