About the BridgeUSA
Summer Work Travel Program

For more than fifty years, the Bridge USA Summer Work Travel Program has served as one of the most popular exchange opportunities for foreign post-secondary school students to visit and learn about the United States. It is also one of the Department’s largest avenues to influence the opinion and attitudes of foreign post-secondary students toward the United States through people-to-people diplomacy. The program also helps these students improve their English language proficiency. Students from approximately 125 countries have the opportunity to earn money to help defray some expenses of a short stay in the United States by working in seasonal or temporary host placements that require minimal training.

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The Summer Work Travel Program links university students from every region of the world to the people of the United States. In the past decade alone, approximately one million foreign post-secondary school students have visited the United States, improved their English language skills, developed ties with U.S. persons, and experienced U.S. culture while sharing their own cultures with those they meet. They have returned to their home countries and, after graduation, have begun careers in nearly every field. They remain lifelong ambassadors between their home countries and the United States.

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The Department views Summer Work Travel as an important and uniquely effective mechanism for establishing cross-cultural communication and contributing to English language proficiency globally. The program represents the largest Department exchange opportunity for young adults; most exchange visitors are between the ages of 18 and 30. The program reaches diverse exchange audiences, including those from non-traditional sending countries and cities and towns outside national capitals. Such characteristics make the program important to the United States because people-to-people exchanges, and especially exchanges for young adults, are one of the most effective ways the U.S. forges ties with other nations.