Sher Bano, a 17-year-old Pashtun Pakistani participant in the Youth Exchange and Study (YES) Program in Evanston, IL, used her exchange experience in the United States as an opportunity to increase cross-cultural communication and understanding:

One of my American friends once asked me if I traveled by camel in Pakistan. Needless to say, my answer was no. But Americans should know more about life in Pakistan than just this. Pakistanis as a whole are democratic, progressive and mostly secular in their attitudes.

In a guest post on Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times blog, Bano writes that she feels “caught between two different cultures” after her year in Illinois. She also offers her take on bridging the gap between the Pakistani and U.S. cultures and governments:

[T]he U.S. must change Pakistanis’ negative perceptions by convincing them that the U.S. supports democracy, not dictatorship; and that the U.S. sees the current crisis as political, not religious. To achieve this, the U.S. must develop a more intimate relationship with Pakistan.