Bringing students together from around the world to examine our “hive” together gives us a fuller view of our world and a better chance to find solutions that work for all of us.

In the next thirty days, teens from Palestine, Israel, South Africa, Guatemala and the Tibetan Children’s Village in India will come together with teens in Seattle. The city will be buzzing with excitement. The students will be learning about each others’ worlds and perspectives through face to face encounters inside and outside the walls of Seattle classrooms.

During most of the year, Bridges to Understanding youth connect through online classroom exchanges, while never being physically in the same room together. The photos, writing and student-produced multi-media stories shared over the internet are powerful and inspire the students to see themselves and others in new ways. Yet we realize the full power of the work when we combine our on-line program with face to face exchanges.

Sophie Geist, a student at Nathan Hale high school in Seattle, got involved in one of our Bridges classrooms, took a digital storytelling workshop, and became inspired to help. This month she returned from a 10 day trip to Guatemala where she brought cultural portraits from Seattle classrooms to share with a new Bridges partner school in Guatemala. “I loved really seeing how one Guatemalan culture operates. I started to understand how a way of living that is so unfamiliar actually works for people in their own place, their environment."

Wanting to care takes compassion. Knowing how to care is wisdom. And acting with care is courage. This is what we are creating through Bridges, and Sophie is one of many students who are translating the compassion and wisdom developed in Bridges’ classrooms into courageous action.

Thousands of Bridges students will be involved this month with an historic event called Seeds of Compassion with the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Bridges is a critical piece of how students can take the compassion and wisdom they gain from this 4 day event, and find ways to take courageous action far into the future.

After all, we only have one hive.

- Greg Tuke, Executive Director

- Phil Borges, Founder

**Come see Bridges' student photos on compassion at the Seattle Art Museum

**Meet Bridges' staff to learn about volunteering or workshops at our Open House Thursday, March 20th from 5-6pm at Getty Images: 601 N 34th st. RSVP to info@bridgesweb.org

**Click here to make a gift to help bring the Bridges program to more youth.