At this moment, a girl from Nigeria is talking to another from Iceland. At the World Bank Teen Summer Program, each of the 32 teens came from unique ethnic backgrounds, covering all continents. In a world where there is so much diversity, it’s unusual that there is an opportunity for such interaction. The Teen Program not only taught us about the organization’s missions, but also gave us a chance to meet people from other countries and learn about cultures around the world.

At the program, there were people of mixed ethnic backgrounds. Although some of us were born and raised in the United States, we still maintain our parents’ nationalities and their traditions. The rest of us moved to the United States during some point in our childhood, the most recent having been here only a year or so. Most families of The World Bank and International Monetary Fund travel to their native countries at least every two years, thus giving the children the opportunity to reconnect with their backgrounds. Unlike other international families, whose children may completely assimilate with the American lifestyle, each of the WB/IMF teens balances two cultures, and some even have dual citizenship.

Another great part of the program is the absence of a language barrier. We may be bilingual or trilingual, but English connects us all. Through English, we were able to learn of other ethnicities and cultures. Our first conversations with each other were about which countries we came from and how it was there. From these conversations, many of us were able to connect with what others said about their countries’ lifestyles to our own. Living in an international community, many of our conversations revolve around travel, and many of us have visited the same countries, which helps us share our similar experiences and cultural insights.

Even though the Washington area itself is one of the most culturally diverse areas, many of us do not find this diversity in our everyday lives, surprisingly even at some of our schools. The Teen Summer Program, however, gave us the unique opportunity to interact with varied nationalities. It broadened our cultural awareness, a value that all of the teens in the summer program think is essential, and made us more knowledgeable individuals.

By Luisa Dziobek, Julian Ragland, Antoine Masse and Marisa Konishi