one near here with city connections and we have some very special guests here today we have three young people from the netherlands who have come to visit alan to michigan so you are from the original holland and we're really glad to have you with and it's so interesting to have you come and to learn from you about what you're doing you're working with the province of drenthe is that right and that's like a state in the netherlands right and they call it trenton we have done here too for obvious reasons for our heritage and so it's interesting that you've been looking into where people come from and what people came over here and settled there so we're really glad to have you it's kind of different of what we're doing here we started the company about four years ago with a group of students from korea and we discovered that there are a lot of places came from which is a region in the province of enter which everybody considered as a boring rule a cultural area but when i looked into it i can i discovered that it's actually a pretty interesting area like in terms of history and culture and that surprise me a little and i noticed that the young people the students in the area had no idea what and what area i mean in but the area they lived they all thought it was boring they all wanted to go to the city to get out of the area as soon as possible this where i actually came in not when designing but i developed into more designing role within the company right now i am actually more i actually have more leading role just like they have within several projects that we run at france and england and also in holland michigan so this is one of our biggest projects the other hours are pretty small so this is our most exciting projects and it's also it's getting closer but we thought the best place to start that is basically holland because this community is amazing this city is amazing they have really funny stories  currently we are looking for people with roots in of dren because we want to have approximately fifteen interview so if there are people who know about that start to share their story or you can't stay here forever you're here for a couple more weeks interviewing and where are you guys now this started when you were in high school yeah you know and that's amazing that many people say oh i'm a junior in high school i think i'll start a company we had a lot of free time so we thought you know why not yeah i'm going to die no it is way to big mouth so we thought well there might be helpful of cities company and also people that could tell the stories and the major goal for all of this is that people will realize where they come from and have an appreciation of history and of their background and of alternately their so where you were in history class or did you like get interested in like family reunion i was i was always interested in history i had a boy i had to do it for history in high school which was like an opposite of course but wow that's that's really interesting to do so you're going to have a whole variety of skills here that will be helpful in building a company and helping other people so have you had good sentinel and then one day i on sunday i went to church with the family that were staying with there was even a lading lady coming up to me with diaries a whole new o newspaper newspapers all our personal letters so we were actually quite overwhelmed by the response that we got last year and that was primarily why we were there in the first place we were not quite sure if interest of building up a network this year is more about really starting off the project wow so there is a strong sense of history around here and we realize that we wouldn't be here if it had a bad for robin van royalty and his group and i mean their adventurous spirit and their take you know setting up this whole community so it's a lot to be grateful for and and it's important to have that gratitude that's a probably a bit of of the mission of beer company as well for people to realize that they're not just here they're here because of the people before that and then they also can be inspired to give back their future generation  actually it's primarily the youth that we're focusing on ok we want to set an example by first off really collecting stories in general so that can be from your grand mom or your mom but the problem is that young people tend to be less interested in history and i think that's because of the fact that is just his sort of history of the word itself  t makes you feel like it is in the past yeah well actually it has more influence in the press and then they might actually believe so that's actually the problem that we found out on young people so getting those stories through young people by letting them as their grandparents sort our mom about mom actually know where we come from yeah well i think you know in this world where we have our own little electronic device and we can do whatever we want to do whenever we want to do it the idea of putting things down and just having a face to face the ever say is less likely than they used to be right and there's no more sit on the front porch and have lemonade and talk for hours right so you have a real mission to communicate to your own generation and we don't want to lose the history  a really fun way to see history we came up with the idea to we cannot expect young people to suddenly go up to their parents and talk about it just because we said so yeah it's not like yesterday they were not interested in their history and today they will be so dense why we thought of integrating our project into high school history programs when i used to be in high school we had  so called history project weeks so that wouldn't be just reading a book and doing the normal stuff that would be a week of really going out into the field and doing research arm what we're trying to find out if that would be possible to do here as well as in the netherlands we want to integrate a project that will give them an introduction maybe the first two days into european american history than after dad really let them go up to their family in groups find out about maybe not your family because they are might not be from the list but a family or for your friends to find out maybe a little bit more about their dutch roots and in that way make history seasonal yeah so it would be good for teachers to contact you as well but yeah if you'd like to get this integrated in the school that's a really yeah so that it's one of our really big next steps yeah  but what we're really trying to do is make it more interactive because that to make it more attractive sure young people make it into a social media platform where after they finish a project they can upload their stories as well as  young people from the netherlands uploading their stories there and they can really connect and make it a more interactive way of learning and in that way learning that it's more a thing of the press and instead of only just history  we can learn so much on what other people have been through in the past rather than having to learn at the hardware ourselves secondly yeah well that's that's awesome so teachers can go to my place book that and al yeah so yeah well that's exciting so now this is your second visit to holland michigan so what do you think about the united states is there anything about the united states that you might like better  no because we are right in chicago little bit over a week ago and we were waiting for the train and there was just i think for people that just started to talk to us and we're not used to that but it's  primary goal right now just see what the possibilities are and we are also still looking for help and funding and i think that that's going to be my next question how who's paying for this well we really an adventure to to leave here own country and develop our whole company and how people get to know each other and appreciate their past and get inspired for their future and it's great to have you back and that's such  and it's great to continue that and to have people in your age bracket that care because you're the right ones to be the ambassadors to your own peers about the value of history and the way to make it interesting and there is no person on earth that doesn't like a story and that's when we can make the stories so that they are interesting and they're in the medium that they're used to using then suddenly they discover a while there is a value  ok so he set a vision i did now it's just been a great experience for us you know the king and queen are going to be coming here in june yeah really i heard about down in that holland but grand rapids yeah  person oh that's great well we so appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule i know you're working in and doing interviews and finding people and you have a limited time so it's wonderful the take this time so that people can time to tune in and learn about your mission and go to my place book at that and al and learn more about it and see if they have any connections or people that would like to be involved so yeah thank you thank you for tuning in again to the connections and if you're interested in other programs that we have done over the past few years you just go to video dot com forward slash city of holland and you can enjoy all kinds of things about this area thanks