Essentially a young person selected by the
Rotary club of their local area (the
sponsor club) to be sent to live in a
foreign country to live and study under the
care of another Rotary club (the
host club).
This care involves
travel arrangements,
education, and
billet accommodation with
local families who are involved with Rotary through membership or
obligation. These host
families basically act as
surrogate families for the student, accepting them as a
short-term member of the family and looking after them as they would their own
child.
Through the course of a year (the usual length of an exchange), a student might (rarely)
stay with a single host family, or more usually move around between 3 to 7 (or very rarely
more).
The
exchange part of the title comes from the
reciprocal contract the sponsor
club enters into, stating that it must itself host a foreign student. This usually happens
within a few years, and although the student the original sponsor club ends up
subsequently hosting may not be sent from the same club that hosted the first student, he or
she is likely to come from a club nearby (that is, belonging to the same Rotary
district).
The details of these sorts of arrangements can be
idiosyncratic and highly
political,
and although both sides theoretically adhere to the official
policies of
Rotary International, the responsibility of upholding these policies lies with the
executive members of each club, who often have different ideas of what the exchange
should entail.
This causes the experiences of Rotary
exchange students to vary
incredibly, as
these experiences depend upon
concentric layers of social climates, at the national,
regional, host club, and host family levels.
So what does this mean in practical terms? It means that Rotary exchange is like the
proverbial
box of chocolates -
you never know what you're
going to get.
The benefits though can be absolutely amazing, and I can say as a
former exchange
student who has been through
the good, the bad and the ugly, that as
awkward,
heartbreakingly lonely and
confounding it could be at times,
my exchange was by far the most amazing and rewarding 12 months of my life, and it
cost me next to
nothing.
Yeah,
I shit you not. One advantage that
Rotary Youth Exchange has over most exchange
programs is that it's run by a very
charitable organization made up of some
fairly
well-off people. These people will send you around the world and support you financially
if you can impress them with your
intelligence,
perseverance, or sometimes sheer
charm. The program exists to send
inquisitive young people out on study holidays to
exotic locales.
If you're in
high school now and you're reading this, you'd likely have a very real chance
at making it
overseas under the
patronage of your local
Rotary club. Keep in mind
though that these exchange placements are very rarely advertised (at least where
I come from). Ask around at school, or look up your nearest club in the
phone book or
the web and express your interest if anything I've said here sounds intriguing. You've
likely got nothing to lose but the best
damn year of your life...
For Rotary's glossy,
official take on student exchange, check out:
http://www.rotary.org/programs/youth_ex/