President Ross has spent much of his Rotary Life (29 years) involved in RYE and so was the ideal person to tell us more.
RYE is the Gold standard of youth exchange. It is the longest existing program, and puts student safety first. There are over 7000 young people on RYE right now, all attending secondary school in their host country, and all staying with host families selected by the host Rotary Club. Host families provide a bed and food. Host Clubs also provide a weekly allowance and provide some other assistance. The parents of the RYE pay more of the costs, currently around $8000, but there is a Financial Assistance Fund available to help families that are not about to afford this much.
A lively Q&A session followed.
As members know, we have Connor Ovens currently living and attending school in Willich, Germany, and two potential applications for outbound exchange in 2021-22 - Izzy Bannerman and Aaron Weidenbaum, with Mika Saunders a possible outbound applicant for 2022-23.
What we don’t have are host parents lined up for our inbound student from January-June 2021 (ideally two periods of 3 months), or volunteers to provide some special weekend or holiday fun for our inbound exchange student.
Chris and Brent Caithness are hosting for the first six months, apart from 4 weeks when they are heading off to see Connor, so any help members can offer in that period would be gratefully received.
Of course having people offer to host is probably dependent on knowing who is coming to us and from where.
Hopefully we will know this very soon!