On April 26, 2024, nine students from Tok will be leaving for the Close-up trip. Close-up is a program that allows students to travel to New York and Washington DC to experience real-life civic engagement and learn more about the United States government. Students can walk around the city and visit important landmarks, such as the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Holocaust Museum. To qualify for the trip, a student must be a part of Migrant Ed, in which they must meet the requirement of traveling for approximately a week during the summer for subsistence activities or work. The students going will be Creede Berg, Jaclyn Born, Marvin Captain, Teagan Champagne, Ethan Gunter, Marco Harven, Lucas Hipp, Nova Paul, Tommy Roper, and Kailie Champagne, who is going specially through the Native Summit program. They are all very excited to go on the trip.
“I’m beyond excited, there are no words,” says sophomore Nova Paul, “I’m excited about the heat and learning about American history and government stuff. And I'm just excited to leave the state for a couple of days.”
Sophomore Lucas Hipp says very enthusiastically, “I'm so pumped up to go! It will be my first time out of Alaska and I get to go to the capital and New York and see the giant rats, and I'm just so pumped.”
Kailie Champagne, a senior who has previously attended this trip, says, “I am pretty excited for the trip as we get to learn more about how our government works. I am attending the Native Youth Summit close-up program. It involves different issues and solutions for the indigenous community. Each person is to present an issue in their village or reservation and we come together as a group to solve the problem. I am also excited to go to New York City and watch a Broadway show.”
We hope these students have a fantastic time and make lots of memories! We will be expecting them to bring back lots of patriotic merch, a tan, and many photos.