Presidents
Your role in the Rotary Youth Exchange Program is critical.
As president there are (at least) four main agenda items for your year to consider:
Identify a Youth Exchange Officer
Or team, with one who will run point as YEO, and others who will help. If you have the members, it would be a great idea to make a mini team of 2-3 people to provide backup and continuity planning
Identify a Youth Exchange Counselor (especially if you will be hosting an Inbound Student)
Budget from about $2000-$3000 across 3 years if you will be hosting a student.
Or, if you set a club goal to host every year, work in $2000-$3500 annually.
Promote the RYE program among your members and community in order to help find host families
As the commander of your ship, you coordinate many different programs and activities with your club. The RYE program is among the more complicated but rewarding items you can bring to your year, though you need to start planing even as a president-elect-nominee!!!
Balancing the Exchange
In order to send a student out for a year abroad (or "Sponsor and Outbound", which currently does not cost the club anything, though you can voluntarily help the family with some of their costs if you would like), it is a good idea to plan to host a student during that year (or "Sponsor and Inbound") ... that way your club is in balance, which will help support the need for the district to be in balance.
Note, although balancing is a great goal for the club, there is some scope for some imbalance while you get things going .... don't hesitate to either host or try and send out a student even if you don't have the other side in place. So long as we are roughly balanced across the district (i.e. so long as some club is hosting without an outbound, while another is sending an outbound without hosting), things will still work. Just keep in mind that if you have an Outbound, but you are not hosting, your student may be on "standby" until we know we can balance things at the Central-States (the Multi-district organization with 19 districts to which we belong) level.
Budgeting for the Exchange
The planning period to bring in an Inbound is a 3 year leadership process. While you are President-Elect-Nominee, $1000 from your club, along with a commitment form, needs to be sent to the district by 30. June, about 14 or more months prior to the student's arrival.
There is no cost during the year you are president-elect, but after the student arrives, there is a minimum $75/month commitment from the club to the student (and most clubs will budget more to help with phone costs and school lunches). Please see the graphic below for an idea on the timing. At the bottom of the page, some sample budgets are shown for minimal and higher support levels for your Inbound student.
Planning for an Outbound
The hardest part of the Outbound process is usually publicity. Hopefully your high school principal and guidance counselors will know about the program ... if not, try and have a Rebound (a student who was an Outbound, but has now finished and is back) come present to your club and/or to language classes in your high school.
Your YEO and team will provide most of the work for searching for outbounds, but allowing them to insert speakers into the rotation, and giving them some spots in your newsletter or social media will be fantastic.
Helping on the Host Family Hunt
The hardest part of the Inbound process is finding host families. Hosting a student is much like having a child. If you don't have children, the concept of having them seems daunting an alien...but after you have them, you cannot imagine life without them. It is much the same with an exchange student (with, of course, life's caveats that there are always hiccups).
Your YEO and team should lead the hunt for host families, but they will need a lot of help, cheerleading, and support. Please try and have your PR committee help them, and/or plan to have open houses funded by the club to promote the idea of hosting in your community.
Having Fun
Above all, make sure there is a lot of fun to be had by your club in the process ... your YEO will bear the brunt of the paperwork and frustrations of red-tape, but it can be a huge asset to your club to have a student, and to get the membership involved with taking them occasionally out to dinner, or bringing them to a sporting event, or concert, or any of the things that characterize your community.
A Thank You in a Advance
Some of us on the committee were RYE students ourselves, and know first hand the incredibly transforming power an exchange can have. These students usually "reinvent" themselves, transforming from a mono-culture citizen into a multi-culture representative of what it means to not just cherish their own culture, and not just their newly adopted culture, but also all cultures. While cherishing the small differences in cultures that don't have to divide us, they at the same time see through such differences, and recognize the incredibly-deep shared-humanity every person on this planet has in common.
Your club's participation in RYE is a beautiful thing, and can be a singular way to advance the world toward lasting peace.
Thank you!
Budgeting Examples
Typical minimal budget (required minimums):
-14 months from arrival: $1000 (eg, while you are president elect-nominee)
month of arrival: $75 (eg, in Aug of your presidency)
+1 month after arrival: $75
. ... $75/month stipend.....
last month of residence: $75
total for 11 month stay: $1825
total for 12 month stay: $1900
Typical high-support budget:
-14 months from arrival: $1000 (eg, while you are president elect-nominee)
month of arrival: (eg, in Aug of your presidency)
phone line initialization $40
registration fees for school $100
stipend $75
phone bill $24
school lunch (12 days@$3/day) $36
+1 month after arrival (Sep):
stipend $75
phone bill $25
school lunch (20 days@$3/day) $60
( 7 intermediate months : 7*160 $1120
last month of school (May):
stipend $75
phone bill $25
school lunch (20 days@$3/day) $60
+9 month after arrival (Jun):
stipend $75
phone bill $25
last month of residence (Jul):
stipend $75
phone bill $20
cushion $90
total for 11 month stay: $3000