12 Students, 9 countries

Last weekend (August 22) I had the privilege of meeting eleven really neat teenagers at Camp Sawtooth just inside the Sawtooth National Recreation Area. These eleven young adults are our inbound foreign exchange students who arrived in our district last week.

The come from Sweden, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Chile, Ecuador, Finland, Taiwan and three from Brazil. They'll be our guests throughout the school year. They'll live with Rotary families in Ketchum, Buhl, Meridian, Pocatello, Idaho Falls, Montpelier, St. Anthony and Boise and attend the local high schools.

This is one of Rotary's neatest programs. For every student we receive, we send one of our own out to that country. So, while these neat kids spend the year with us here in Idaho and Eastern Oregon, our kids will spend the next year with other families in these nine countries.

It's our hope as Rotarians that these young people will learn to appreciate customs, culture and language different than their own. We believe through these deep immersions in other cultures will come world understanding and peace.

Our program is different than other exchanges. This is not a profit making enterprise, but a humanitarian one. As Rotarians, the students start out as our guests and become our children. They will be housed in local families, both here and abroad, at no cost and in fact each student will receive a modest stipend from the receiving Rotary club to help them with his or her own local expenses. Families pay a fee for their outbound students. The fee, current $4250 covers the cost of transportation, insurance and the infrastructure we need to make sure all of these students, both here and abroad are safe and have a wonderful experience.

We have a terrific committee of dedicated Rotarians throughout Southern Idaho and Eastern Oregon who work hard each year to set up our exchanges. They work with their counterparts throughout the world to assure every student will have a safe, quality experience.

Individual local students are sponsored by their local Rotary clubs to be outbound students. The committee then interviews, selects and prepares the outbound students for their foreign experience. The committee also receives, orients and works with the local clubs to house the inbound students.

We are very focused on safety. Each family that houses a student goes through a back ground check. Each student is assigned a counselor who is a member of the hosting Rotary Club. This counselor is an independent individual who is assigned the responsibility to inspect the homes where the student will live, work with the families to insure a great experience, and to provide an independent contact for the student.

Idaho and Eastern Oregon students who will be between 16 and 19 at the time they leave for their exchange are eligible to apply. They may be children of Rotarians, but need not be. Selections will be made this fall for the 2010-2011 academic year. Additional information is available from the Rotary District 5400 website. Both the inbound and outbound students maintain a Facebook group.