Application Materials

Long Term and Short Term Youth Exchange Outbound Procedures

1. Student should submit the Short Form Application to a local sponsoring Rotary Club.  (If you don’t know which club will sponsor) send the application directly to the District Youth Exchange Officer YEO_5790@yahoo.com and he will locate the appropriate Rotary Club for you.

2. Local Rotary Club will review the application and set up a date and time for the in person interview.  Parents are expected to attend the interviews.  If the local Rotary Club approves student, student is notified and file is forwarded to the District Inbound Chair.

3. District Interviews are conducted in early January and attendance at the interview is mandatory for student as well as parents.  We also ask that a member of sponsoring Rotary Club attend the interview as well.  Interview times will be scheduled and students, family and Rotarians will be notified.

4. After District Interviews are completed the District Committee reviews all aspects of the student’s application:  The recommendation from the local club, the interview with the student and the interview with the parents.  Each student is assessed for success and the students are then notified via e-mail from the District Youth Exchange Officer within one week of the interview.  Applicants for the Long Term program are not fully vetted until successful completion of all of the District Orientation and the 1 week summer outbound orientation, June 15-19, 2016.  The Short Term program students are fully vetted once they have completed the District Orientations and have received written confirmation from District YEO.

5. Following acceptance of the student into the program each student will be asked to complete the Rotary Youth Exchange Long Form Application.  This form will be forwarded to the student either via a web-link or a direct e-mail attachment.  This form must be fully completed prior to the First District Orientation.  Sponsoring Rotary Clubs are encouraged to work with their sponsored student to help in the completion of this application.  The Sponsoring Club Guarantee portion of the long form application needs to be completed prior to the First District Orientation.

6. Students and families, for both Short Term and Long Term program, are required to attend a minimum of 3 District Orientations.  Members of sponsoring clubs are invited to attend the District Orientations as well.  The dates, location and form for these orientations will be provided in the acceptance e-mail that is sent out following the District Interviews, but occur at roughly one month intervals January, February and March.  There are a number of District 5790 Rotary events that we ask the outbound students to attend as well, those dates will also be given to the students along with their acceptance letters.

7. As part of the ongoing process the District Committee will work with the student and family in arranging their exchange with a host country.  This is a very complex process and certain procedures must be followed.  We will attempt to accommodate specific country requests for exchange, however we will only exchange with Certified Rotary Districts. We currently Exchange With: Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Czeck Republic, Taiwan, Japan, Austria, Denmark and a number of others.

8. Some countries have minimum language requirements; we will notify you at the time of your interview if you meet these requirements.  Other countries other than those mentioned above will be considered, however no country can be guaranteed until that country has received the students completed application and has agreed to accept that student.  We will not know for sure the country has accepted the student until approximately the first of March.

9. While we do not require that the family of a Long Term Student outbound student host an inbound Long Term Student we do encourage families of Long Term Outbound Exchange students to host if at all possible.  

10. If the parent/s of an outbound student cannot host and inbound that family will be asked to provide us with the name of at least 3 potential host families within their community. We also encourage Sponsoring Rotary Clubs to act as Host Clubs for inbound Students. The District Committee will provide training and evaluations for those families interested in hosting at the same time they are participating in the outbound orientations.

Clubs interested in sponsoring and Outboard student should complete the "Outbound Student Club Application at this "link"


 

Norm King  - 817-781-3327      or     e-mail Norm at YEO_5790@yahoo.com