NORTHAMPTON —  This summer, Northampton High School junior Isabelle Hettlinger is leaving the country for the first time and going to Guaranda, Ecuador.

She saw posters around the school promoting a travel abroad program in South and Central America. “They looked intriguing,” she recalled. “I had wanted to travel with the school somehow,” she said, adding that she saw it as an opportunity to practice her Spanish.

When she tells people about her plans they often ask: How much does it cost?

In the past, the Northampton School Committee has debated the issue of costly, student-funded trips. A proposed trip to Guatemala, which runs about $3,000 with airfare, prompted a discussion about affordability two years ago.

But when Hettlinger tells people about the scholarship she got that covers much of the cost of her pending trip, she said, “they are amazed.” She’s one of 14 NHS students traveling this summer with a nonprofit program that operates on a sliding scale.

Global Glimpse, started in 2007 and run by a Valley native, works with more than 80 partner schools across the country, sending students from different socioeconomic backgrounds to the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Panama.

This summer will be the first year NHS students are involved. The high schoolers will travel to Panama, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic on 16-day trips in groups mixed with young people from Westfield, Springfield and Greenfield.

Superintendent John Provost said the program is another option for students, and that it has not replaced other student-funded international trips. Next year, for example, a trip to Greece and Italy is being planned for Latin students, and Provost said the trip’s estimated cost is more than $3,000.

Of the 49 western Massachusetts students participating on Global Glimpse trips this summer, 88 percent have some scholarship, and 60 percent have a full scholarship, said Executive Director Eliza Pesuit.

Students from families who make more than $150,000 pay full price for the program, which allows Global Glimpse to provide aid to students from lower-income families, said Alex Fogel, the Northeast programs manager for Global Glimpse. Depending on the scholarship amount, Global Glimpse trips can cost between $500 and $4,200 and includes airfare, according to the Global Glimpse website.

Young people in partner schools need to apply to go on the trip, and Fogel said they look for qualities like leadership potential.

“I think traveling is so important to do — just to see our way of life is not the only way of life. It’s humbling for me personally,” Fogel said, adding that it’s made him more open-minded.

Fogel is a 2008 NHS graduate who returned to teach special education and Spanish at the school between 2015 and 2017.

In addition to touring cities and taking part in activities like hiking or visiting the beach, participants also tutor English or work on a service project that a board of local community members helps determine. Last summer, one group repaired a park and installed lighting in it, said Pesuit.

Pesuit is also from the Valley and graduated from NHS in 2003. She said she felt lucky to grow up in a progressive community that values education.

“But I think I lacked an understanding of inequity and the opportunity to connect with people whose lives and backgrounds were different from my own,” she said.

The trips aren’t only about connecting students with people and places abroad, but also with people from different areas of the Valley. Mixing NHS students with peers from surrounding communities is intentional.

“As much as it is a trip about experiencing another culture, its also seeing the different perspectives in the Pioneer Valley,” said Jeromie Whalen, an NHS technology teacher who is involved in the program and going on the trip to Ecuador this summer.

Hettlinger is grateful for her scholarship, and looking forward to the trip.

“I think I’m mainly excited about just being in a place that is very, very different from the United States,” she said, “and especially different from Northampton — just getting out of my bubble and being able to experience different ways of living.”

Read the article at The Daily Hampshire Gazette