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In a move unique among missions organizations, Experience Mission has launched a new International Exchange Program to send the residents of its partner communities - those from disadvantaged areas who normally host incoming mission teams - on mission trips themselves.

“The International Exchange Program is at the heart of our mission and our passion, which is the communities,” said EM Executive Director Chris Clum. “To provide people from our U.S. urban communities or international locations the opportunity to do something like this has the potential to change their life forever.”

EM’s goal is to send more than 50 partner community members on mission trips in 2009, and 50 former EM summer staff interns are leading the charge to raise the funds needed. The cost of sending one partner community member to another location is about $1,000, and each student has committed to raising that amount through donations and monthly pledges.

The program is being launched in the hope it can help participants ward off the demoralizing, dream-stunting state of mind that can be engrained in those suffering in poverty’s grip.

“A combination of people, culture and circumstances can rob your hope and steal any ambition that you have that it can be different than it is,” Clum said.

Clum said the exchange program will allow participants to meet and learn from people in other parts of the world living in the same circumstances they are, equipping them with new tools they can take home to help inspire hope.

“What can be so powerful about this is that it’s like a match—it takes one match to light a fire in a field,” he said. “In so many cases you see that in a small little village in someplace like Jamaica or Mexico, it takes one or two young people who come back who are willing to step out of the status quo or break away from limitations, and it can change the communities and open up the eyes of so many others.”

“You put God in the middle of that, and it can be pretty powerful,” Clum added.

The idea is not untested. In July 2006, EM raised money to send a team of 25 high school students and young adults from Ruiz, a small town in Nayarit - the poorest state in Mexico - on a mission trip to the border town of Tecate. Participants described it as a special opportunity that spurred them toward pursuing further service opportunities. One young woman, then 18-year-old Veronica Bernal, ended up serving as an EM summer staff intern in Mexico the following year.

She said living in poverty left her especially prepared to work with others in similar circumstances.

“We have lived all that,” Bernal said just after her mission trip. “We have felt - at least I have - what it’s like to not have a definite place to live and to have to move from house to house.”

How you can help
Visit our Exchange page to learn the basics about the program and to make a donation. Your one-time contribution or monthly pledge would go entirely toward direct costs associated with the trip and could help make a life-changing impact on an impoverished partner community member - a person who might otherwise never have the opportunity to step outside the confines of their impoverished environment.