For participants of the Youth Leadership Program, a visit to Dartmouth is not just a stop on the Ivy tour. It is a step toward rebuilding democracy.
For three weeks, the College is hosting an ethnically diverse group of 18 high school students and four teachers from Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of an ongoing project sponsored by the U.S. Department of State to promote leadership and community involvement.
The Program is directed by education department Chair Andrew Garrod and Josh Thomas '00. Both have made prior visits to the strife-ridden Balkan nation to conduct research among children and adolescents. Education Professor Jay Davis '90 is also a major contributor to the project.
In a country plagued by a 70 percent unemployment rate and an exodus of college students to Western Europe and the United States, the program's participants are the last to remember a peaceful and integrated society before war broke out in the early 1990s.
"Currently, the students are taught in [ethnically segregated] shifts," Garrod said. "The schools have become highly polarized -- the program is not only trying to get kids to reinvest in their country, but also to learn respect for other cultures and religions."
Thomas added, "It will hopefully turn the tide of the country's outlook."
Program participants will divide their time between Hanover -- residing with host families with children at Hanover High -- and Boston.
A trip to New York City, led by Almin Hodzic '00, is planned along with visits to local schools. At Hanover High, students will make presentations on plans to rebuild their home communities. Meetings with the governors of New Hampshire and Vermont are also scheduled.
The Youth Leadership Program has been run twice in past years by Project Harmony, a Vermont-based organization.
"What makes our program different," Garrod said, "is that each of the high-school kids have individual undergraduate mentors" from various campus outreach organizations, who underwent extensive training with a clinical psychologist from Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.
Dartmouth students of Yugoslav background have been contacted by the program coordinators and asked to offer their perspectives.
Prior to their arrival tomorrow in Boston, the participants attended an orientation at the Jahorina Olympic site outside Sarajevo, where they met with Dartmouth representatives.
"The program is about giving kids leadership for social change by immersing them in American democracy," Thomas said. "The part that's most difficult is taking what they have learned back home."
Garrod and Thomas will visit the towns of Brcko, Gorazde, Stolac and Travnik this summer to check on the students' progress.
"It's a very complicated situation," Thomas concluded, "but at the same time, these kids just want to be normal European teenagers."
