Local Emissaries United Looking Back

This is me taking some time to think back about out trip and think out loud of plans for the future, as related to a troy resident and supporter.

The Troy Ambassador program as some may call it (Local Emissaries United) went pretty well! It was a pretty serious undertaking and I started planning too late. There were three of us traveling - we managed to visit 12 cities in 3 weeks, and talk directly to around 200 people about their cities and ours. We spoke a whole bunch about where we are from, but it also turned into a big focus group on where people live the places they do, and why they value that. Pretty cool. We took a lot of video footage, but upon returning, all us got involved in jobs, our education, and other serious things that have kept us from editing it down to a documentary record of our journey. We will do this at some point. Overall, we found it quite economical to travel and spread the word. Perhaps the greatest enabler of our journey was couchsurfing.com, which allowed up to connect with people who gave us free places to sleep, and gave us a venue to talk about our project. For the future, it would be nice to endow/put together a program (just a few thousand, or even just a couple hundred dollars per year), to sponsor people to learn how to benefit our area. Intrepid local people could put together travel plans, submit a proposal, and bring back word of the successes and failures of other cities, or we could enable people to come here to experience this area themselves. After this trip, it is my strong opinion that our area needs a more intimate relationship with the "outside world."