Our feature

Richard Steppe (r.) performing for some of his BFTF friends

Richard Steppe won last year's essay contest organized by the US Embassy in Belgium.  His prize was a four-week stay in the United States in the Summer of 2011. He looks back on the BFTF program as well as on his personal experience with the program. The deadline for the 2012 essay contest is March 1.  See additional information on the contest elsewhere on this site.

Hello, my name is Richard Steppe and I’m an 18 year old second year Law student at the University of Brussels. To start off with my main thought right away: BFTF (a.k.a. The Benjamin Franklin Transatlantic Fellowship) was probably one of the best things that could have ever happened to me. And that’ll be the conclusion of this article. 

Strange note to start on, you might say? A conclusion as an introduction? Not weird at all, cause literally everything else will be me explaining how much of an impact this project has had on my life. The experience was simply life-changing, and therefore I want to inspire all of you to participate to the edition of this year. I sense the query as to the ‘why?’ aspect of this statement coming up. Well, let me briefly introduce you guys to the main faces of this ‘fellowship’. 

There are different aspects as to why you shouldn’t miss a possible participation to this project. First of all, the most natural thing to come up with, is the fact that whoever wins this project this year, will be going to the United States for a full month. And trust me, if you’ve never been to the States yet, the culture shock will be quite huge. In a good way, though. You will be amazed by the size of things, but also by the hospitality of the people who you’re with (such as the amazing mentors you’ll have, and the simply awesome host family you’ll stay in for a week).

You won’t just be going to the States though. You will, once in the States, be staying at the Wake Forest University Campus for quite some time. There, you will get classes from wonderful, intelligent and humorous people. Or let me say “workshops”. You will learn a lot, but you won’t have the feeling that you’re actually studying something. Because “studying” was exactly the one feeling I didn’t have when I was attending these classes. We talked about the contemporary aspects of the U.S. Constitution and compared the latter one with Constitutions of Europe, talked about diplomacy between Europe and the U.S., social movements, had some great practical classes on how to make documentaries (where we made our very own documentary, accompanied by our own articles, site and home-made videos), did some awesome trips to Philadelphia and Washington, and many, many more things. 

And once you’re back in your own country, you can spread the word about these things and get people to open their minds for new and interesting things and get totally internationally-minded. But the cool thing was: throughout this entire time we enjoyed ourselves incredibly much and some extremely close friendships were built throughout these activities. 

This gets me to my next point right away: the social aspect. You’ll be making a lot of friends. Did I say a lot? I meant a huge lot. However, they won’t be your everyday friendships. They’ll be international friendships. I got to meet a lot of interesting youngsters and not-so-youngsters from all over the globe myself, and the mere fact of having a wide spectrum of people sharing their thoughts, discussing and having a lot of fun in general was simply astonishing. 

You’ll be broadening your connections and expanding your interests. However, you might be thinking: “Oh lord, but.. these friendships are from all over the globe? I will never see them again except for maybe that guy from Holland”. Nope, you’re mistaken. These friendships will be from all over the globe, that’s a fact I can share with you. And it’ll be a greatly interesting fact to share your ideas and opinions with other people who might have another point of view, or who might think you’re absolutely right, or who might be interested in hearing why your country has been without a government for such a long time (trust me, if I had a penny for every time I’ve explained that to people… I would have exactly 70). But you will most likely be seeing those people back. 

The people you’ll meet will be friends for life. Well, maybe not all of them. But a lot of them will be, although it’s hard to make enemies in a project where everyone is so open-minded. I myself, for example, have already met up multiple times with about 7 people from BFTF 2011 this year. I became extremely close friends with some of them, and I know I just couldn’t live without our daily chats and Skype conversations. They changed my life, just as the project has. The project ends after 4 weeks (and that’ll come along quite fast, trust me – no really, trust me.), but at the same time it won’t. At the same time, it’ll continue for the rest of your life. Once you go BFTF, you’ll never go back. It’ll certainly leave its traces in every fellow's life. It will be staying in your heart forever. I know it for sure did in mine. 

Richard Steppe, December 2012