Northfield Strong: Youth Exchange - Style One
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night” questions to the often tearful goodbyes when the student moves to the next host family and ultimately back to the home country at the end of program year.
Hosting exchange students in the Northfield School District is just part of our culture. It may not be a question of if, but of when, you’ll find yourself hosting a student from Germany, Brazil, Hungary, Slovakia, or Paraguay.
The students that come to us from our Rotary partners overseas are motivated and brave individuals, up for the challenge of crossing cultures and open to new experiences. We've had students enjoy the many extracurricular activities that Northfield offers such as American Football, music & dance, theater and more. Many have immediately signed up for fall sports upon their arrival in August and started making meaningful friendships that serve them well throughout the year.
The time to commit to being a host family is in the spring, though signups occur on a rolling basis throughout the year. To learn more about being a host family for Rotary Youth Exchange, contact me or the Northfield Rotary Club to get started - northfieldrotary.org.
otary unites the world. I've been a member of Northfield Rotary Club since 2017. In 2019 they put me in charge of the Youth Exchange program, one of the strongest passions of our local club.
Rotary Youth Exchange has taken over Northfield. In a recent three year period the Northfield Rotary Club sent 39 high school students overseas for a year-long academic study. These exceptional young men and women lived with host families in the Faroe Islands, Zimbabwe, Brazil, Finland and many more countries, all returning with amazing stories of strength and struggle filled with cultural nuances. Listen and you'll hear not only stories of daily life but also a vision for a better way to a better world. It is not uncommon for our club to routinely send 10+ students on a life changing experience. One summer in July we held a story sharing party with the returning outbound students and the soon-to-depart students; it was inspirational to hear the wisdom of these young people and their insights into communities, cultures and how to make friends on the first day of school (hint: complement their choice of shoes).
The flip side of sending students outbound is the wonderful obligation to host inbound students. Not all Rotary clubs around the world participate in youth exchange. In our local region there are around 40+ clubs that particpate in a typical year and collectively host 50+ students. Most Rotary clubs host one while a handful host two, and another club may host a nearly unheard of three. Northfield routinely hosts five.
The only way we can support so many students is our wonderful and generous host
families. Each student is assigned 3 host families and they rotate every 3 months. The benefits of experiencing 3 different families far outweigh the inconveniences of moving and learning new household patterns. After all, the whole point is learning, and this triples it. From 2016 to 2020 our Rotary club hosted 21 students with over 60 host families opening their homes and expanding our collective world.
Maintaining a robust youth exchange program has become our norm because of exceptional individual efforts over the years. Rotary
provides a deep structure of support for the students that includes a one-to-one counselor program, a sort of buddy and advocate relationship that begins even before arrival at MSP in August. We also have country officers, youth protection officers, outbound student coordinators, dedicated correspondents, a host family coordinator, a youth exchange officer (yours truly) overseeing the entire program, and several key supporting members without whom, frankly, I’d have to do a lot more work.
Northfield Rotary is so very grateful to our host families. They give so much of themselves, sharing their lives and showing our community to strangers who soon become friends and life-long members of the family. The growth is striking from those first awkward moments and “first
