Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke to outgoing participants of the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study Program (YES) yesterday, commending them for being “courageous” and for “taking this opportunity to see what it was like in the United States.” Clinton also thanked the students’ host families for “opening up their homes to each and every one of you. We obviously could not run this program without them.”

Clinton reflected on the growth of the YES program and noted that the State Department intends to send more American high school students to live in Muslim-majority countries in the coming year:

I’m thinking about when this program started, it was back in 2003 and there were only 160 students. This year, we have 875, and there are more than 4,400 young men and women who have already participated from nearly 40 countries. And it is really important that we arrange for you to stay in touch with one another and to be part of this network of alumni from the YES program. And in the coming year, the State Department will continue our pilot program to send American high school students to your countries and to have a similar experience to what you have had here in our country.

The Secretary also imparted to the students her belief in the importance of exchange programs and what she hopes they took away from their year living in the United States:

Part of what I really believe, as I work on difficult problems around the world, is if we can get people to start looking at each other with mutual respect, with a mutual awareness that we do have so much more in common, treating someone as you would wish to be treated, not as the other but as a fellow human being, it’s not going to solve all the problems but it creates a more – more possibilities that we can find some common ground. And I hope that each of you goes back home with the idea that even in your families, your neighborhoods, your communities, there’s – there are opportunities for trying to find those commonalities, for bringing people together, seeking that common ground.