If you have room in your home and space in your heart, please consider serving as a host family for our Milford Rotary Club international exchange student for school year 2024-25.
A Youth Exchange Student typically resides with your family for approximately 3 to 5 short months, as we aim to have at least 2 and possibly 3 host families per school year. Single-person homes to families with multiple siblings can all serve as loving and learning experiences for an exchange student. And you, in return, will also experience love and learning, insight and new understanding that can expand your world in many ways.
This year, our exchange student is a young woman from Ukraine who will be enrolled as a junior at Souhegan High School. She speaks four languages and enjoys sports, music and art. It takes a person with confidence, a sense of adventure and the ability to learn and adapt quickly to cope with the situation of relocating to another country, moving in with a family you don’t know, and going to school in a foreign language. She will fully participate in classes and may participate with various school sport teams or other school groups. She'll be here to try all sorts of new experiences of life in New Hampshire, including developing relationships with her host family and others.
Essentially, she would become like a member of the family while in your home. She'll participate with household chores and family responsibilities, and you would provide the same for her as you would your own (although the Rotary club does provide a monthly allowance to the student for personal expenses). There will be some activities associated with the Rotary District that she will share with other Rotary exchange students (ski trip, travel to Boston or NYC, Rotary District Conference, etc.) that are not paid for by the host family but by the student or by Rotary.
Hosting an exchange student is fun, educational, and mostly it’s incredibly inspiring. It’s a wonderful way to learn about other cultures and contribute to building a world with better understanding and respect between people. Two of our former Host Families recently shared some recollections about their experiences -
 | “The experience helped us learn a great deal about Turkish and Dutch culture (Tulin was a dual citizen), and we developed a long-lasting relationship that continues to this day. We also loved the full support that Rotary Exchange students enjoy through the district. The students have frequent gatherings and events where they get together with the other Rotary students staying with families within District 7870. It became clear that the Rotary program is the premier program of its type in our area, both for this support but also in the quality of students that are accepted into the program.” - Jay and Toni Dinkel | |
 | “Having Julia was a joy. She brought a beautiful light to our home and quickly became part of our family. Julia joined us at all our extended family gatherings and the Christmas we shared with Julia was one of my favorites. I cannot imagine my life without Julia in it.” - Jane Lyttle |
The need to find families for the coming school year is on-going and urgent. We are happy to share more information if you’d like to explore further. If you, or someone you know, would be interested in this rewarding opportunity, please contact Milford Rotary Youth Exchange Coordinator, Allise de Smet at Allised@gmail.com and we can arrange a call to talk about it more.
Rotary Youth Exchange Students 2018-2019