Well researched and written book.
"As the principal researcher and author of “A School for Tomorrow: The Story of Canada World Youth”, Mark Dickinson has given the world, and especially Canada, both an important history book and a life lesson. The book is the story of the birth and eventual demise of a unique Canadian non-governmental development organization. It also contains a lesson in how the world might learn to live together peacefully. As discussed in detail by Dickinson, Canada World Youth (or “CWY”) was the visionary and improbable creation of Jacques Hébert, a Québec journalist, publisher, activist and former Canadian Senator. It was Hébert’s profound commitment to world peace that created CWY in 1971, and his indefatigable energy and determination that drove this international youth exchange program forward for almost half a century until its formal closing in 2022. Hébert died in 2007 at the age of 84. As the book explains, during CWY's lengthy period of operation, some 80,000 youthful participants from Canada and from scores of exchange countries experienced the challenges and joys of coming to understand and typically to cherish one another. They managed this generally positive outcome by, in the words of Jacques Hébert, "". . . building a tower together"". It was during collaborative work on reciprocal community service projects and through painstaking discussion of apparent cultural differences that CWY participants found a common space wherein mutual understanding and affection might flourish. Dickinson knows of what he speaks, as he was a participant with the CWY Indonesia exchange program in 1994-95. Evidently CWY was for Dickinson, as seemingly for the majority of former CWY participants, a “transformative” experience that contributed substantially to shaping his life choices toward global equity and peace. In general, Dickinson tells the remarkable story of CWY by drawing on the recollections and documents of many CWY alumni, both former CWY staff and participants. As a former CWY field coordinator during the 1970s CWY era, I highly recommend ""A School for Tomorrow: The Story of Canada World Youth"". It is an elegantly written book with a still relevant and important deeply human message for our troubled world."
