Youth travel and student exchange programs now and in the future

Let me introduce myself. My name is Ali and I am a first-year student at the Eurasian Humanities Institute. I am studying to be a teacher of humanities, majoring in History. I am 17, and I turn 18 on April 1st...

America... back in early childhood, I planted seeds in my head with a dream of visiting this country so that it would grow in the future and make me fly there. And so, in the 8th grade, I started learning about various student exchange programs that would allow me to visit this country. I learned about Work and Travel USA, which is a massive and accessible exchange program for students who want to spend bright, unforgettable holidays in the USA and get to know American culture and people, as well as meet new interesting people from all over the planet. I became interested and wanted to finish school as soon as possible, enter university, and fly to the States through the Work and Travel program to fulfill my best childhood dream as soon as possible.

I have not yet had experience with student exchange programs or traveling abroad. I want to conquer America first, and then, having gained experience, continue to add to the list of countries I will visit in the future.

As a fan of World History and a future history teacher, I am very interested in many countries, their culture, people, and the history of these countries. And the first country I want to visit is the United States of America. My father visited America in 1999-2000, even before I was born. My dad is a very lucky man because he won a trip in a contest where the prize was a visit to this country absolutely for free. By the will of fate, a simple guy from a village got a chance to fulfill his American dream. And naturally, in my childhood, he often told me his interesting stories about his past and, in particular, about his travels, which aroused in me a strong enthusiasm for traveling to different countries. And my special dream in childhood became, first of all, to visit America and see with my own eyes all the wonders of nature and the cities of this country, which is beautiful to me. Since childhood, I set a goal for myself that in adulthood I would definitely take a photo exactly in the same places where my father took photos in his time and show him these photos for comparison to evoke surprise and joy in his eyes through the prism of time in the photos. A strange, but at the same time special goal for me, which motivates me to learn languages and work in order to fulfill my childhood dream, where I finally breathe the free air of America with a calm soul, walking on foot through Time Square on a warm summer evening, listening to Lana Del Rey songs in the background, and watching the large flow of people, in which everyone is moving somewhere, just like I once did to get here.

In America, I will not miss the chance to study and absorb the routine life and culture of this people as much as possible in person to feel what American society feels. I want to know more and see everything with my own eyes. Besides this, as a historian and as a patriot of my country, I will do everything to create good marketing for my country and its culture to somehow increase the awareness of my country. I will try to the fullest to show and surprise people of other nationalities with the culture of our people. First, I want to open my YouTube and TikTok channels in America and post interesting videos there about how I cook beshbarmak and other national dishes of ours and let foreigners try them. I want to make a presentation for them on the topic of the past and modern Kazakhstan, where I will tell them the history of our ancestors and about their semi-nomadic life in the steppe, and also about how current Kazakhs live now and how much we have developed over the last 30 years since independence. And, of course, I will show and tell them about our cities, and in the end, I will give everyone our national clothing <3. That's not all; upon arriving there, I will also come up with many different, interesting, and legal ways to spread the culture of my country as much as possible. Another goal of mine in this country is, of course, to overcome my language barrier and improve my English. I want to communicate a lot with native English speakers to polish my English to perfection and find many new interesting friends and acquaintances from all over the world to keep in touch with them in the future.

Besides traveling and broadening my horizons, participating in the program can help me in my future career. I can save the money legally earned in America and, in a few years, invest this money in my business plan related to my profession. Since education even in large cities is lagging here, in rural areas it leaves much to be desired because many graduates do not know the 6th-7th grade math curriculum, and their English level is beginner or elementary, even though English is taught from the first grade... As a future teacher, I want to provide knowledge to the growing generation on a large scale and not be limited only to my profile subject that I will teach. Working simply as a state teacher, I will not be able to achieve a global result in teaching children; I will be able to teach a maximum of 200-400 children a year, which is very sad for my goal. With the money earned in America, I want to add part of my capital and rent a space for my educational center, where I will hire qualified teachers who will teach English or mathematics. There, I will already have the opportunity to expand the reach of training and earn money by opening new branches of my center. Later, in a few more years, I will open an experimental free private school in a village with my own teaching methodology to improve the quality of education. And if the result is good, I will eradicate the current education system and try to implement my newly developed system into the state one. It sounds like a fairy tale and is too promising, but still, these are my thoughts and goals regarding my career and the education of Kazakhstan, and participating in the program can help me with this and speed up the process.

And now let's talk about the program: what could I change or improve in it if I were the boss? I would probably increase the number of countries that can participate in Work and Travel. After all, it is the most popular and massive program, and if I am not mistaken, about 40-43 countries can participate in it. This is, of course, a lot, but still, one needs to take into account that there are 197 countries in the world. But I think this is just a matter of time, and it will be resolved gradually. Besides this, the Internship USA program does not have many professions for internships for students and graduates. For example, my profession is not there, and I am offended that I will not be able to go to America under this program and start an internship there and gain experience. Besides this, I would add to this program the possibility of internships in America for creative people like singers, actors, designers, etc. I believe this would be an excellent way for them to develop further and possibly even become popular abroad, as usually happens with our artists.

In conclusion, I want to write that I am glad that we have such programs and opportunities to fly to America or other countries where we can spend unforgettable holidays. I hope in the near future these programs will be even more accessible. I think that soon we will also reach such a level that in 20-50 years, people from all countries will already be flying to visit us under these programs and discussing Kazakhstan!

Finally, I want to show photos of my father in his youth when he was in the States.