Forbes Under 30: American Exchange Project promotes understanding through travel

Posted by: Laura DeMarco on Monday, June 26, 2023

The idea started with a road trip.

Boston resident David McCullough was a recent American Studies graduate from the prestigious Brady-Johnson program at Yale University, and not sure of what to do next.

“I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I had curiosity,” says the founder of the American Exchange Project, a Forbes Under 30 honoree, on a recent call. Born in Boston and raised partly in Hawaii, McCullough is the descendant of Armenian immigrants who fled the genocide on his mother’s side, a father who is a high school English teacher, and a grandfather who was a prominent American historian.

The non-profit he founded is a free domestic exchange program that sends high school seniors to spend a week in an American community very different from their own. So far, the group has sent 500 high school seniors from 30 states on free, week-long trips to locations across the country.

“I had an education studying American communities, and a happy memory of a childhood road trip with my dad [a cross country trip to visit baseball parks] and I said, I'm going to go hit the road in summer.

“I’m going to go to some of America's most impoverished communities and I'm going to talk to people working on issues of working on education. I wanted to pick a small town, a unique area, and study it because I felt that could span the different types of communities in this country."

On the morning of his 22^nd birthday, he hit the road.

“I borrowed my mom's car and I was on my way to South Texas. On my first night I stayed with a dear family friend in Solon.”

That friend, the Rev. Richard Gibson, is the pastor at Elizabeth Baptist Church in Slavic Village.

He convinced McCullough to stay a while in Cleveland and make the city and its students part of his summer research.

“He got me interviews in schools with different students and teachers. I even got into the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Detention Facility and interviewed residents there. I went to church, and I was also there during the Republican National Convention.”

McCullough researched issues of inequality and race, and how “different types of high schools and charter schools and public schools were interacting in the same education environment.

“I really went in with an open mind. I wanted to sit down and talk with parents and teachers and students and administrators discussing what's gone wrong.”

McCullough continued his road trip later that summer, heading next to Detroit, Texas; Pine Ridge, South Dakota; a reservation in Virginia; and back to Boston.

By the time he returned home, he had the idea for the American Exchange Project.

“I learned that kids across the country needed stronger social networks,” says McCullough. ”Many had not been able to interact with people who were very different. That would not only have value in terms of expanding their perspectives, but also value toward advancing their opportunities in life.

“Everywhere I went, kids were very interested in places like Boston and other places around the country. When I got back to Boston and I was researching what sort of nonprofit or social innovation I could scale up for teenagers, I realized that all kids around the country were complaining about the same thing or different versions: ‘I feel like I'm growing up in a bubble and have never seen life outside.’”

With the help of several foundations, the American Exchange Project was born.

Reaction was overwhelmingly positive.

“Enormously positive and enthusiastic everywhere,” he says. “Part of that is because of the fact that we're curious wherever we go and we don't have any political agenda. Our philosophy is that one's beliefs generally, but especially their political beliefs, are really a byproduct of our lived experiences.

“Because it's such a big country and a diverse country, we know very, very little about people who live in different circumstances.”

This summer, the free programs sending 34 students from 57 schools to Texas, Massachusetts, Maine, Georgia and Montana. (Cleveland is on next summer’s agenda.)

Teens stay with host families, and embark on both structured activities and just living day-to-day life with local teens.

“You’re doing any number of events and activities designed for exposure to local culture, big fun community events that happen, rodeos, state fairs, things like that.

“It’s total immersion, total hanging out with a group of kids from around America. The whole idea is for these students to learn a little bit about what it's like to grow up in these communities. And in doing so, about themselves.”

McCullough has also learned valuable lessons.

“I think that living in a different town for some amount of time during your high school years should be like a ritualistic rite of passage. This it would do so much for our political culture.

“Everywhere you go in this country, there are wonderful people who welcome folks in their lives. No matter how divided we think we are, there's much more we have in common. I believe the current struggle is more from the fact that we don't understand each other.”

Interested in getting involved with the American Exchange Project? Learn more here.