Neighbor News
Youth Cultural Exchange
Award winning youth from Chess Without Borders host a youth from Rwanda, Africa to learn about cultures and exchange ideas.
This summer the team of volunteers from Chess Without Borders was privileged to engage in an unusual service project. They had the opportunity to host 19-year-old Jean Ntawanguwe from Rwanda, Africa right here in Barrington.
Rwanda, a small landlocked country in east-central Africa, is trying to recover from the ethnic strife that culminated in government-sponsored genocide in the mid-1990s.
The country has struggled with its legacy of ethnic tension associated with the traditionally unequal relationship between the Tutsi minority and the majority Hutus.
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Today, Rwanda is striving to rebuild its economy, with coffee and tea production among its main exports. The World Bank has praised Rwanda's recent "remarkable development successes", which it says have helped reduce poverty and inequality.
The team explored the language and geographical differences between Rwanda and the US to develop their ideas and enrich their projects. For example Jean lives in Northern Rwanda and he was pleased with the idea of teaching soccer as a service project. In fact he was introduced to Chess Without Borders through Nina Sethi, (alum of District 220 schools) who taught in the Bridge to Rwanda program last summer. He heard of the teams work combining chess with service through Nina. Several members of the Chess Without Borders team spent time and made an effort to introduce him to American food, culture, customs, brought him to their homes and even taught him swimming. Jean was quite interested in the taxation system in the US and was full of questions as he also visited a Hindu Temple in the suburbs of Chicago. He visited the Field Museum in Chicago and marveled at the exhibits there.
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Jean will study electrical engineering at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany this fall.
Volunteers who participated in the cultural exchange were Jack and Jane Bradley, Prathik Kandimalla, Ayushi and Aryan Shah, Eleanore Marwijk van Kooy, Nabeel and Yasoob Rasheed, Millen Srivastava, Sidharth Gehlaut, Toby Schwartz and Rohan Ahuja.
