Dr. Catherine Bishop's new book "The World We Want" chronicles a special educational program from the Cold War era with high school students around the world

Last Friday's launch of Dr. Catherine Bishop's book "The World We Want" at The Debs Center of the American University of Beirut in New York City (October 4, 2024) was great. This unique book describes a program called the World Youth Forum, which ran from 1947 to the early 1970s and was initiated by the defunct newspaper The New York Herald Tribune. It involved selecting high school students from all over the world, called "delegates," to attend schools in the New York metro area and live with host families for about three months. They later spoke on radio or television about their impressions of the United States (many videos of the TV programs are posted on YouTube and are making quite an impression). The paper's political and social connections ensured that they rubbed shoulders with celebrities and sometimes US presidents like Truman, Eisenhower, and JFK.

I was invited because I had interviewed a 1947 delegate from Ecuador named Susana Donoso, who was referenced twice in the book. (She is 94 years old and still sharp.) See my 2011 blog post of our interview at https://latin-caribbean-travelblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/susana-donoso-who-participated-in.html . My contribution was a tiny drop in the bucket, because besides her exhaustive research, Dr. Bishop contacted 300 delegates, or families of deceased delegates, from every corner of the globe.

My wife Adriana accompanied me and was as impressed as I was by the perceptive comments of the delegates present regarding the program and its impact on their lives. The youngest person in attendance participated in 1973, and the oldest in 1952 (roughly between 68 and 89 years of age).