Student Exchange Program
Club Seeks Exchange-Student Host Family
The Hollis Brookline Rotary Club will again this year host a foreign-exchange student, who will attend Hollis-Brookline High School for the full ten-month school year 2011-2012. The new arrival will be temporarily “adopted” by a series of three families, each of which will provide three months of room, board, and a loving family environment while the student attends Hollis Brookline High School.
Unfortunately, the search for host families is off to a slow start. The Club has received one expression of possible interest, but it has not signed up any of the minimum of three Hollis or Brookline families that are required to divide up the ten-month-long hosting commitment. At least one of the three must come forward very soon; otherwise it will be too late to commit to accepting a student for the 2011-2012 academic year.
“Hosting is really an enriching experience,” said Jennifer Starr, mother in one of the families hosting “Mild” (Jekita Suhiranyawanit), our current Rotary-sponsored student. “Our time as a Mild’s adoptive family gave us all – Mild included – a different viewpoint on the world.” Jennifer went on, “Now, more than ever, we subscribe to the idea behind the student-exchange program – the idea that two-way exposure to other cultures has enormous value.”
The incoming student for 2011-12 cannot be selected until a host family is identified. Past students on the Rotary Youth Exchange program have come from every continent except Antarctica. Our own Hollis Brookline Rotary Club has hosted RYE students from India, Spain, and currently, Thailand. Students are between 15½ and 18½ years of age upon departure from home country, and they will have been selected for the program through very careful screening conducted by the “sending” overseas Rotary Club.
The “receiving” and sponsoring Hollis Brookline Rotary Club is responsible for the welfare of visiting students, and it provides a monthly spending-money allowance to the student and is available to provide other forms of support. To qualify for hosting, the family must live in either Brookline or Hollis. The family is responsible for providing the student with room and board, as well as with a family environment that is appropriate for a hard-working high-school student who is in totally new – literally “foreign” – circumstances.
Care is taken to match, to the extent possible, student and host families. Hollis Brookline Rotary Club will remain closely involved with the student throughout the year. In particular, one or two Club members serve as counselors to the student throughout the year. Incoming students travel on J-1 (student) visas and are expected to attend school full time.
The Southern New Hampshire / Southern Vermont District of Rotary International hosts more than 20 incoming students each year as a part of the Eastern States Student Exchange (ESSEX). This program has been in place for over 30 years, reminding all participants over the years that “the most powerful force in the promotion of international understanding and peace is exposure to different cultures.”
For more information contact Dick Mills at 465-3324 or by email at rgmills@tds.net.