A Different Kind of Trip

We did something last month we’ve never done at International Samaritan.  We brought a team of students from Detroit’s public high schools on a trip across the Atlantic to build bonds with our scholars in Ethiopia.  Our goal was not just to give six Detroit teenagers a life-changing experience, but also to give ten teenagers in Ethiopia a life-changing scholarship for a year through our fundraising efforts before and after the trip. 
 
This was by far the most remarkable trip I have experienced in almost five years with International Samaritan: Young people from some of the toughest neighborhoods in both America and Ethiopia coming together to share experiences and learn from each other as friends.

Instead of doing “service projects”, our trips like these are now focused on building relationships through experiences together.  We taught each other songs and dances, talked over coffee, completed a high-ropes challenge course together, and broke into competitions to see which nation could do more push-ups.  These are the types of activities we want all of our partners and communities to enjoy as we build year-round partnerships going forward. 

What made this trip different was the shared bonds between young people overcoming poverty in two distinct settings.  We all read Dr. Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail and then talked about and painted what perseverance means to us.  We walked through the garbage dump together, led by one of our scholars, and of course the young people from America were saddened by how difficult the conditions were.  But the next day, the Detroit students discussed the challenges they have overcome.  I was in tears listening to kids I’ve known for eight years share experiences we don’t give them space to discuss in America, and the pain of their trials made the scholars in Ethiopia say that they didn’t realize how good they had it growing up where they did.  Pause and think about that for a minute. 

One other thing that made this trip different was the people who made it possible.  Seventeen people came together to give sixteen young people in two countries a life-changing experience.  Of those seventeen donors, all but four grew up in either Detroit or Africa and overcame significant challenges of their own to be able to make investments like this in the dreams of others.  What a joy and honor it is to walk hand-in-hand with such a remarkable group of people adding so much to our mission and this world.

Mike Tenbusch, IntSam President

Mike joined IntSam in 2018 after two decades of leading social change in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan. He’s a University of Michigan Law grad and author of The Jonathan Effect: Helping Kids and Schools Win the Battle Against Poverty. He and his wife, Maritza, have three children who keep them young.