LOS ANGELES — This summer a group of high school students brought a whole new meaning to foreign exchange programs. Wendy Rojas of the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles immersed herself in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Expecting to see Mt.
Rushmore, she instead found herself setting the record straight about her hometown. No, she explained to locals, her neighborhood is not overrun with gangs and rife with gunfire like they'd seen in the movies. Maggie Quine of Kilgore, Texas, was just as shocked with what she had to clarify to L.
A. teens visiting her hometown. No, Texans don't get around on horseback.
Although Rojas and Quine didn't need a passport for their trips, they might as well have traveled to a foreign land. In a novel program designed to break down entrenched stereotypes and spark lasting friendships, the American Exchange Project sent 13 urban L.A.
teens to places like rural Arkansas, Ohio and South Dakota while 10 students from Texas, Pennsylvania and elsewhere arrived in Los Angeles. "We're trying to create a kind of antidote to prejudice by bringing together groups of young people who are very different from each other ..
. politically, racially, ethnically, culturally, socioeconomically, and providing them with experiences that help them humanize the other so that they don't demonize them later," said David McCullough III, the founder of the organization. The genesis of the program is rooted in a 2016 cross-country trip McCullough took as a 22-year-old Yale s.