International Youth Exchange Programs

I met an interesting man yesterday. David Smith has hosted 114 international Rotary students over the past 36 years. When asked why he does this, he stated that it broadens his understanding of different cultures. It has allowed him to create new friendships and new family bonds around the world as a host father. Although he and his wife provided food and shelter for these students, it has been a mutually satisfying venture. He has attended international weddings and several of the students call him regularly to check in or make visits.

I also met Brock Ashford, an Illinois high school senior, who recently returned from a year in Italy. After living in Italy for a year, he claims it as his second home. He found that in meeting people from all over the world, he realized that the world doesn’t revolve around America. He said that international travel expanded his horizons about the world and himself. He had to assess his strengths and weaknesses while adjusting to a new country and he returned with increased confidence. He is now bilingual and bi-cultural. Exchange programs also enrich students’ future. They are likely to have more earning potential because study abroad is attractive on a college application as well as on a job application.

In having close personal contact with international students, we become empathic toward people different from ourselves. Mark Twain said “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, . . . Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” Our world view is broadened through travel in a way that one cannot achieve through reading or movies. Immersion in another country, over an extended period of time, changes us.

To take this concept a step further, past Rotary International President Carl Wilhelm Stenhammar once said that if all the 17-year-olds in the world could spend a year with Rotarians in a country other than their own, there would be no more wars. Perhaps this is wishful thinking, but he makes a point about the blurring of boundaries. Rotary Youth Exchange Objectives state that “the most powerful force in the promotion of international understanding and peace is exposure to different cultures. The world becomes a smaller, friendlier place when we learn that all people – regardless of nationality – desire the same basic things: a safe, comfortable environment that allows for a rich and satisfying life for themselves and their children. Youth exchange provides thousands of young people with the opportunity to meet people from other lands and to experience their cultures, thus planting the seeds for a lifetime international understanding.”

Although they do not reach all the young people in the world, Rotary does provide more than 8,000 high school students annually with high-quality exchanges all around the world. This is an amazing contribution to world understanding.