Give and Take

Founded in 1971, Canada World Youth was the brainchild of the Quebec journalist, author, publisher, inveterate world traveller, and future senator Jacques Hébert. It was an exchange program that brought young people from developing countries together with Canadians for six months of education, cross-cultural exchange, and work based on “social and cultural immersion, aimed at broadening the experiences and the viewpoints of individuals, as well as their outlook on the world and on the nature of relationships between persons and between peoples.” According to Mark Dickinson, who participated in the mid-’90s, CWY was not an aid-based development initiative but “something unique and without precedent.”

Typically, cohorts from such countries as Indonesia, Tanzania, and Guatemala came to Canada for three-month stints, joining with their counterparts on study tours, cultural sessions, and work projects. Then they would all depart for similar exercises in the exchange...