No Happy Ending — Yet
Hallmark movies often put their characters in challenging situations, but we all know that it’ll work out in the end.
Not so with the Eagle/Garden City Rotary Club’s attempt to bring the district’s first exchange student from Africa. We’ll call her Mary. Despite the best efforts of our club, the Idaho Fine Arts Academy in Eagle, and Dr. Vincent Kituku’s nonprofit Caring Hearts and Hands of Hope, our movie featuring Mary did not have a happy ending.
This last year was the culmination of a chain of events that started with Dr. Kituku speaking to the Interact Club at the IFAA several years ago. His speech inspired the Interact Club to sponsor four Kenyan girls to attend the Caring Hearts High School in Machakos each year. The Interact Club’s desire to one day bring a Kenyan girl here to Idaho led to the school hosting Eagle/Garden City exchange students over the last three years to gain experience. And last fall, these events all came together as Dr. Kituku, Brendan Earle (faculty advisor for the IFAA Interact Club) and Natalie Chavez (YEO for the Eagle/Garden City Rotary Club) met to discuss the feasibility of hosting a student from the Caring Hearts High School in Kenya.
Notwithstanding the hundreds of hours we spent, the research we did, the two visits Dr. Kituku made to Kenya in part to facilitate the exchange, the materials we put together for Kenyan decision-makers and the many email communications with our counterparts there, the decision came down to a government official who lacked knowledge of the Rotary Youth Exchange program and its many benefits to young people worldwide.
Ironically, at a time when the North American Youth Exchange Network seeks to expand exchanges with Africa and provide cultural opportunities for African youth, our leading-edge efforts failed. Mary was not able to join us in southern Idaho. Still, the lesson we learned is that Rotary International and the Rotary district in Kenya must promote the RYE program there and raise awareness with government departments.
Like so many movie heroes and heroines, we aren’t giving up yet! We know that the hard work we did has made significant progress; we know where the disconnects are. And if we can build on our efforts, perhaps our next movie will have us weeping tears of joy (admit it, we've all been there)!
