Our mission is to improve cultural and environmental awareness and cooperation around the world. To this end, we conduct exchange and apprenticeship programs that function to establish an international community of learners.
Green Across the World, Inc. (GATW) was established as a corporation in 2000, and received Federal 501(c)(3) not for profit status in May 2001. Peter Lynch, GATW’s Founder & Executive Director, has developed partners and associations that place the organization in a strong position to carry out long term and sustainable exchange and curricular programs for high school students and teachers between Vermont, China, Senegal, Japan, and Bhutan. Travel and Virtual exchanges are available depending on the country involved. We believe that effective, long term cultural and environmental exchange between North America, Africa and Asia is beneficial to developing international relations aimed at promoting peace and reasonable prosperity.
History
Since 1995, Green Across the World’s (GATW) Founder, Peter Lynch, has engaged in a variety of highly successful exchange and apprenticeship programs in Hong Kong, Guangdong Province, People’s Republic of China, and Vermont. More recently, he organized successful travel exchanges with Tottori Prefecture, Japan, and virtual exchange with Bhutan. In 2017, Green Across the World initiated travel and virtual exchanges with Senegal, West Africa.
Green Across the World arose out of a field biology and apprenticeship program that brought five students from Fair Haven Union High School, Vermont, to Hong Kong to study with the field biologists of The Conservation Agency, Jamestown, Rhode Island, during the summer of 1995. During the summer of 1996, this apprenticeship program included a visit to the Affiliated High School of South China Normal University (Hua Shi Fu Zhong- HSFZ), Guangzhou, Guangdong, People’s Republic of China. Program director Peter Lynch met with Principal Wu Yingmin of HSFZ to discuss establishing a summer exchange program in field biology and natural resource management.
For more about our history click here.
Green Across the World is unique because Our Programs are…..
- Reciprocal exchanges, online and with visits to China, Japan, Bhutan, Senegal and North America.
- Ones in which students and teachers work and learn together.
- Ones in which cultural exchange is facilitated by focusing on common challenges and interests.
- Enhanced by a collaboration of state and private institutions, business groups and concerns in Vermont, and an equivalent collaboration in China and Japan.
Our goals are to…
- Develop leadership skills among students through a balanced and detailed study of current environmental topics.
- Create and maintain a community for cultural exchange and understanding among students, teachers, mentors and others across the World through study of common interests.
- Inform public debate about current environmental topics while increasing awareness about the significance of developments in Asia and Africa.
- Increase interest in Asia, Africa and environmental studies among American students and educators.
- Provide students and educators across the World with…
- an overview of natural history and resource management in Asia, Africa and North America with a special emphasis on South China, Tottori Prefecture, Bhutan, Senegal and Vermont.
- an understanding of the methods, interested parties, and politics involved in natural resource management in these regions.