As an outgrowth of a decade worth of trips, in 2002 Matt and Mark started a Youth Exchange Program between East Vancouver and Fort Good Hope (Radeli Ko) in the Northwest Territories.

Another exchange was just completed in October 2007 and it was another incredible time: they just keep getting better and better. If you are interested in getting involved in the exchanges as a participant or in any way, just give us a call.

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The exchanges are pretty standard in some ways: two weeks in each community, youth partnered up and staying in each others’ houses, participating in various cultural and community events etc. In many other ways however, this is a different kind of relationship, in part because it is tough to imagine two communities within Canada being more different: one a diverse urban neighbourhood (Commercial Drive) the other an isolated Dene community of 600 people on the Arctic Circle, 750 miles northwest of Yellowknife, right on the Mackenzie River.

The exchanges are also organized explicitly with the goal of getting native and non-native kids together. We have long noticed, especially in a diverse neighbourhood like ours, that kids are largely tolerant of one another in an era where they are bombarded with anti-racist messages. That tolerance is about as far as it tends to go through, and native kids especially tend to live in different worlds from non-native youth.

The central goal of this project is to move past simple tolerance and towards comprehension of each other’s home lives and communities. We’ve had some great times so far and are looking forward to continuing to build the relationship between communities.

You can see a bunch of awesome photos that Nigel and Isaac took from the 2007 exchange at their photo sites:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=good%20hope&w=22313966%40N00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/isaacisaac/sets/72157602602621171