GLOBAL EDUCATION AMONG YOUTH:
17 YEARS AND COUNTING

Not long after the founding of Jamaican Self-Help (JSH), plans were afoot to create wider learning opportunities for youth offered by our projects in Jamaica.

In 1984, teacher John Martyn of Peterborough approached us with the idea of taking some students along...just three the first summer, to Jamaica to do a little volunteer work and see first-hand global realities. They would also test out their own capacities.

This was the beginning of 17 straight years of youth awareness trips.

Kids from schools and youth groups across Canada: Port Hope, Peterborough, St. John's, Antigonish, Vancouver, Lindsay, Norwood, Lakefield and places in between. A steady stream, perhaps 40 each year, of young people eager to see, to know, to serve, and to come home ambassadors for global peace and unity.

It has been an enduring and happy saga. Accomplished in safety.

Now, in 2001, over 500 Canadian young people have had a Jamaican experience, and more will follow. Through the remarkable dedication of volunteer leaders, and the generosity of Jamaican partners as hosts, a large, possibly unrecognized, contribution has been made by JSH to the great human goals for our world.

Our conclusion is that diverse societies can come together to enrich each other. In 1996, at a reunion for past participants, 70 people, now young adults, gathered to share stories and laughter, to recall feelings and rennew commitments, and to explain how their early experience in the developing world shaped their subsequent life choices. There were teachers, nurses and doctors, people working in the Arctic, those with other international Non-government Organizations (NGOs). Many also expressed a longing to "go back".

When all is said and done, in development assistance raised by JSH over the years, may be secondary to this lasting legacy of Jamaican-Canadian Cooperation among young people.

Many are now in their late thirties. They will soon move into public policy-making, carrying with them first-hand knowledge of the world's inequities, which they first saw in Jamaica with us.

This may prove to be the most fruitful effect of our years of work for a better world.