GFS’ Tlaxcala, Mexico Exchange Creates Lifelong Bonds and Changes Lives

On Sunday, April 12, GFS held a celebration party to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the school’s exchange program with Escuela Secundaria Técnica Número Uno in Tlaxcala, Mexico. In attendance were numerous alumni who’d participated in the program throughout the decades, as well as current Upper School students who’d gone on the exchange this January, and host students and their families with visiting students from Tlaxcala.

Current and former faculty and staff were also present, including retired teachers Marnie Kerr and Bob Rhoads, who were honored for founding and stewarding the program over many years.

Kerr was deeply moved that partners from the Técnica were able to join the party virtually, via Zoom. She noted that seeing so many faces from the past and present underscored the lasting value of the exchange program.

“The fact that the program is still going after 40 years demonstrates that it’s life changing for children year after year after year,” she said.

It’s not just the students whose lives are affected and changed by GFS travel exchange programs. Sometimes, these experiences impact an entire family’s life story.

When their daughter Emily Licht ’00 was in ninth grade, GFS parents Walter and Lois decided to open their home to an international student. In 1997, they hosted Damara Parra, a student from Escuela Secundaria Técnica Número Uno in Tlaxcala, Mexico, in their home in West Philadelphia. Their connection felt immediate.

“When Damara walked off that plane and I made eye contact with her, she had this buoyancy and a smile, and I thought to myself, ‘I'm going to know this person for the rest of my life,’” Walter remembered. 

For Damara, this moment was the culmination of a plan she’d put in place two years prior. As a seventh grader, she set the exchange to GFS in her sights, and tenaciously committed to the goal of keeping her grades up so she could be eligible when she reached ninth grade. Her top marks and a qualifying exam earned her a spot on the exchange, which she sees as a major turning point in her life.

“My mother was a single parent, and I didn’t have access to many things growing up—I hadn't even traveled that much in Mexico,” she remembered. “Coming to GFS and meeting this family was like entering a whole new world.”

Emily, also in ninth grade at the time, was an only child and was thrilled to have a companion her age staying in her home. When she met Damara, she experienced a similar feeling to her dad’s.

“Despite our language barriers, Damara seamlessly fit in with our family and I felt really close to her,” she said. “She became a best friend immediately.”

“I’d hear the girls gabbing upstairs through all hours in both Spanish and English,” Lois added. “They found a very easy connection.”

After Damara’s short month staying with the Lichts and attending GFS passed, they all kept in close touch, primarily via email. When the Lichts visited her in Tlaxcala later that year, they met her extended family who welcomed them with open arms. The Lichts would occasionally fly Damara back for visits over holiday breaks, and Emily visited her in Tlaxcala a few times on her own.

These experiences made a strong impression on Emily, who continued studying Spanish in college. 

“Visiting Damara’s home in Mexico opened my sense of language and travel,” she noted. “I studied abroad in Chile in college, and then stayed there a year after I graduated to continue my immersion with Spanish.” 

Maintaining her connection with the Lichts empowered Damara to pursue higher education and to think about the trajectory of her life through a different lens. 

“In Mexico, families are often traditional, so seeing Lois, working as a social worker who had one child, changed my perspective and made me feel like it was okay to imagine different possibilities for myself,” Damara said. 

The connection between the Lichts and Damara continued while she was in college, and, when she returned to Philadelphia for graduate school, the Lichts once again opened their home to her. She lived with them for months while taking business classes at Drexel University, volunteering for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, and running financial literacy programs for immigrant populations in North Philadelphia; they helped her navigate the complexities of securing and renewing her visa. 

“So many things in my life came from them guiding me through the processes and seeing possibilities I didn't even know existed,” Damara reflected. 

In 2009, a friendship, and then a romance, blossomed between Damara and a man, Fernando, whom she’d met at a conference. As their relationship progressed, Fernando eventually called Walter to ask his permission to propose to Damara.

“Damara didn’t really know her father, so I became her father,” Walter said. ”She just became so intertwined in our lives.”

Most of Damara’s family couldn’t travel from Mexico to attend her wedding in 2010, so the Lichts stepped in to help. Lois took Damara wedding dress shopping, and Walter walked her down the aisle and gave her away, and made a toast in his best Spanish during the reception. They hit it off with Fernando’s family, whom they now consider their in-laws. The following year, Damara was a bridesmaid in Emily’s wedding. 

Damara moved to New York, where, year by year, she built a career in the non-profit sector running financial literacy programs—she is currently Director of the Financial Empowerment and Advocacy Unit at New York Legal Assistance Group. When Damara received her U.S. citizenship in 2017, Walter and Lois were at her naturalization ceremony. When she earned her Master's in Family and Consumer Sciences from Iowa State University in 2025, Walter and Lois attended her graduation. 

“She is for sure my parents’ other daughter,” Emily said. “Though we don’t see each other now as much as I’d like to, we reconvene in Philly at my parents’ over holidays and my children call her Auntie Damara.”

As Emily lives with her family in Baltimore, Damara and Fernando have taken on the role of checking in on Walter and Lois. They help tend to their garden, and house-sit if they are out of town. In 2020, the two couples visited Mexico City, where Damara and Fernando acted as translators and tour guides.

What started as just a one-month exchange has evolved into a 30-year relationship which has enriched the lives of Damara and the Lichts. All parties speak of each other with deep affection, and with gratitude to GFS and this exchange program allowed their paths to intersect.

“The Tlaxcala program is important—it ripples out in ways that one can’t predict,” Lois said. “In our family, it has had an impact beyond what was initially imagined. We have benefited so much from Damara and Fernando being in our lives.”

Damara wholeheartedly agrees.
 
“The exchange was the opportunity that changed my life,” she said. “The Lichts have been so supportive; I feel like they are my parents, and a lot of what drives me is wanting to make them proud.”