Judith Single (left) president of the Penticton-Okanagan chapter of Friendship Force, and Mavis Grant, a past president, spoke last week about their organization that lets travellers form friendships with hosts elsewhere. (Richard McGuire photo)

Most people who travel choose to stay in hotels, eat in restaurants, visit tourist attractions and only rarely make more than superficial contact with the locals in the places they visit.

But last week those attending a presentation at the Osoyoos branch of the Okanagan Regional Library learned about an organization, the Friendship Force, promoting a different kind of travel.

The presentation by two representatives of the Friendship Force Penticton-Okanagan was one in the library’s series of Healthy Living presentations and it was well attended.

“What we bring to you is a program that brings people together into each other’s cultures and homes to share a one-of-a-kind experience that’s not usually available to tourists,” said Judith Single, president of the Penticton-based chapter, which includes members in the South Okanagan.

“Our mission is to promote global understanding across the barriers that separate people,” she said.

There are 23 Friendship Force clubs in Canada and the organization is based in more than 60 countries.

Club members host groups from other clubs, both domestic and international, when they visit the Okanagan.

And local members each year can also travel to other locations near and far where they stay with club members in those locations.

Mavis Grant, past president and field representative for the 11 Western Canadian clubs, gave some of the background of Friendship Force International, which was founded in 1977 with strong and active support from then U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn.

Originally, she said, Friendship Force involved travel in groups of about 150 to 400 people known as “ambassadors,” who travelled by chartered aircraft to a partner city for these exchanges.

“Today we travel in much smaller groups, usually 20 to 25, on what are now called ‘journeys,’” said Grant, who lives in Oliver.

For inbound visitors who in recent years have come from such places as Bavaria in Germany and Japan, the local members plan programs that may include a stint of working at the Okanagan Gleaners in Oliver, visiting the Osoyoos Desert Centre or stomping grapes at Oliver’s Festival of the Grape.

Members put the visitors up in their homes, make breakfast for them and typically accompany them on their local excursions.

Sometimes clubs arrange reciprocal journeys, visiting the communities and homes of their guests and maintaining the friendships.

Or they may request a journey to another location, subject to availability and approval by Friendship Force International’s head office in Atlanta, Georgia, which coordinates travel.

Where a club has insufficient members able to make a journey, it may team up with another club.

For example, Grant said four members from the Penticton-Okanagan club will be joining with a group from central Australia to visit Tucson, Arizona next year.

“They didn’t have enough,” she said. “They only had six people, so four of us will be joining them.”

Members make their own travel arrangements to get to the destination and they may arrange other travel before or after the one-week stay with the host club. But while staying with the host club, they don’t have hotel costs, which are typically the largest expense of travel.

Single said one of her most interesting journeys was a trip to Toulouse, France a few years ago, but the experience that stands out the most for her was hosting in incoming journey from Japan when she previously lived in Manitoba.

“I had two gentlemen stay with me and on the last night at the farewell dinner, I actually gave a speech in Japanese,” she said. “They had translated my English speech into Japanese.”

Single, who had never before spoken Japanese, delivered the speech in Japanese and then had to translate it back into English for her own club members.

Grant recalls a trip to Taipei, Taiwan, where she stayed with a couple who spoke very little English but had a 17-year-old niece who was sometimes available to translate.

At one point a friend of the niece gave her a ride on the back of a scooter through Taipei’s rush-hour traffic as Grant held the poorly fitting helmet in place.

The advantage of this kind of travel, said Single, is that you can see and do things a regular tourist would not even have any idea about.

“How many people coming from somewhere else would go to the Gleaners and peel onions?” she asked.

Participants tend to range in age from 50 upwards, said Single, noting that one local member is 95 and travelled as recently as last year.

And they tend to be single women, she said, adding that the local club of 22 members currently has two men, but no couples.

“As a female alone, it’s a great way to travel,” said Grant.

The club has monthly general meetings as well as social meetings. There’s an annual fee of $30 Canadian plus an additional fee of $15 U.S. that is paid to the international organization.

There are costs to the travel, but they typically work out to be less than staying in hotels and eating all meals in restaurants, as a regular tourist would do.

For further information, visit: www.thefriendshipforceofpenticton-okanagan.org or call Judith Single at 204-294-6428.

RICHARD McGUIRE

Osoyoos Times