DL Breakfast Rotary Youth Exchange History

In those years our Club hosts an inbound student it is our practice to hold an Ethnic Dinner featuring the food of the visiting student’s home country.  To this end, the student is asked to work with a local chef to prepare a menu of food items that are representative of their country.  Usually we include a slide show dealing with the student’s country.  Sometimes there are songs and other attributes designed to show our club’s appreciation for the student’s culture. 

In 2016-17 our club did not receive a student, so instead of feting a particular country, it was decided to use the Ethnic Dinner to focus on our club’s involvement with Rotary’s Youth Exchange (and some related activities).  

The DL Breakfast Club is relatively young by Rotary standards.   We received our 1^st YE student in 1996 and sent our first outbound the following year.   Since that time, we have sent six and received 15 more.   In addition to our YE involvement, our club sponsored an Ambassadorial Scholar to study in Ireland and hosted seven Russian students (and their teacher) for a summer.  

Early this year, a committee was tasked with the idea of contacting as many of these students as possible.  With a mix of personal contacts through host families, Facebook and other sources, we managed to receive responses from nearly all of our alumni. 

The ethnic dinner, attended by almost 100 Rotarians and guests, featured a reading of messages from YE alumni by other YE alumni and host families.  The readings were accompanied by a slide show presentation of past and current pictures of the students.  The event culminated in a Youth Exchange trivia contest.   

Participants in the evening recalled with pride and pleasure the club’s twenty-one years of involvement with student exchanges.

Our first student was Andrea Gronska, from the Czech Republic.   She was 13 years old when she arrived; today she is a physician in London caring for premature babies and newborns with congenital anomalies.  She is married to a Swedish soccer player with whom she has just had her first child. 

Our first outbound student, Austin Tomlinson, went to Hungary in 1998.   He returned to Hungary for University, then to University in Switzerland where, among other things, he learned Italian.  Then he went to Bolivia to work on his Spanish.   Currently, he lives with his wife and child in Singapore where he is the Global Alumni Relations Director for INSEAD, in which capacity he leads that multi-national school’s engagement efforts to 50,000 alumni in 170 different countries.

That night, we heard many more such stories.  One outbound, in Venezuela during the anti-Chavez riots in 2000, is an attorney who worked on immigration law for the U.S. Justice Department.    AiJin, after careers in music and teaching in her native Japan, now is in the Japanese consulate in New York City.   Our first Mexican student Rodrigo is with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.   

Amanda, an outbound to France, is now a CPA in Detroit Lakes.  Mika is a public defender in her native Brazil; Russian student Andrei is a 737 captain working for an Indonesia airline and Emma from Sweden is a police crime investigator.    Mollie, who went to Brazil in 2007, later majored in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago, spent time in Egypt and Morocco, studied Arabic in Oman and then worked for the Legal Aid Society in New York City.  Now she is at Stanford Law School.   Carlos works as a manager for Pfizer in their Costa Rican office.   Many other alumni, both inbound and outbound, have returned to their home country and continue to pursue educational or training goals.

Some responded to our request for information with heartfelt testimonials about the significance of Youth Exchange:

“My participation in YE program fundamentally altered my life.”

“My year in Detroit Lakes taught me so much and made me who I am.”

            “It’s not just about moving to another country and learning another language, it’s about embracing everything          around you, growing as a person, creating new friends and building life-long relationships with other people.”

 

            “I honestly believe that the world would be a kinder place if everyone had to live in a completely different       culture/language for a year. So thank you again for giving me and other students that opportunity!”

 

            “My time spent in France is one of the most amazing leaps of faith I have ever taken in my life.”

 

            “For you, I might be one of many exchange students, but for me, the year in America made a huge impact on my               life and I’m forever grateful for this experience.”

 

            “It's already been 7 years since I met with you and the morning group to start the initial interviews and meetings   which changed my life.” 

 

            “Once I learned foreign exchange was a real thing, I knew that’s what I wanted to do.  I knew it would be hard but          I was, and still am, determined.”

 

            “Spending time abroad at a young age helped me develop a more open-minded outlook and instilled in me the    confidence to confront new challenges. Thank you for the opportunity!”

We did not overlook the host family involvement during the Ethnic Dinner celebration.  Altogether 31 Rotarian families served as host families, many on several occasions.    The intense relations that developed between the students and their hosts of all ages are well-known to our club; many have persisted long beyond the actual exchange period through subsequent shared family exchanges, weddings, graduations and the like.    

 

But we really don’t know how to measure the full impacts of all these experiences and interactions.  Our respondents volunteered many testimonials, often like this one  “I have to thank my host families because I owe so much to them….they are just the nicest, caring and most amazing people I ever met and I thank God He put them on my path.”   And one persuasive piece of evidence comes from our current outbound to Finland—“My thoughts of being a foreign exchange student came around when we hosted our first foreign exchange student from Sweden.”

 

Moreover, we are confident that the interactions among students and host families, and for that matter the many members of the club who invested time and treasure in making student experiences meaningful,  go much beyond what our data show or the anecdotes.  Obviously, Club members have learned more geography and about other cultures—a central Rotarian value.   But in all probability, our student exchange related events—programs, welcome picnics, school interventions,  happy dollars, and yes, ethnic dinners—have broadly increased members’ sensitivity to other Rotary-inspired international causes such as promoting peace, fighting disease, supporting education and growing local economies.   

 

As our Club moves forward, the 2017 Ethnic Dinner celebration of our youth exchange history reflects a continuing commitment to YE and other exchange programs.