Earthquake Damage

Sara Mauer sent us this picture taken in Talca after the earthquake.  Her series of pictures show much of the damage and that people are coping with it.  One picture show people around an electrical socket recharging their cell phones.

Sara Maurer and her friend raise money for people in the stricken area of Constitution in Chile.

Sara Maurer from Bexley living in Talca, Chile

Catherine Correa from Concepcion and Santiago,  Chile living in Westerville OH

Diego Alvarado from Cartagena, Chile living in Hilliard OH

See Rotary District's 6690 Plea For Help from DG Ram Gawande

We have tracked down all our exchange students.  Most of them live within a 100 miles of the Epicenter of the massive 8.8 Earthquake which occurred last weekend.  All our students in Chile and safe and doing well. The families of our two inbounds, Diego Alvarado and Catherine Correa are accounted for and safe.  Catherine, who is sponsored by the Rotary Club of Westerville Sunrise, only heard about the safety of her father after 5 days of trying. Catherine was a member of the Santiago Interact Club, which is working on relief for the victims of this earthquake. Bexley's Sara Maurer who lives in Talca, which suffered severe earthquake damage in the older sections of the city, has expressed a desire to stay and help with the recovery efforts. Sara is a student at the Columbus School for Girls. 

A letter from District Governor Ram Gawande

Dear kind hearted Rotarians

Small plan to help Chilean Earthquake disaster

  Another disaster has come to test the strength of our spirits, our generosity, and our capacity to serve. The Chilean Earthquake is the worst in some ways as it touches our heart in a very different way as we are close to Chilean people through our Youth Exchange students. We have been receiving and sending youth exchange students who have touched many hearts. We received an email from Sara Maurer. She is safe but her heart is broken to see the destruction and suffering. She wants to stay and help the victims.

Sandy Pyle, the District YEP coordinator is hoping to raise enough money to purchase a Shelter Box to send to Sara's club from our District.  Sara’s family in Columbus, along with two other Chilean students, Catherine Correa in the Westerville Sunrise Club and Diego Alvarado in the Hilliard Club are inspiring us to show the true spirit of Rotary and pitch in to help our friends in Chile.

With our growing experience in responding to disasters, we have a strategy in place for the wise management of our donations.  We will use the same conduit that we used for Haiti, with the idea that we will send Shelter Boxes and financial assistance in the name of Sara and the other Youth Exchange Students.

Please send your donations to

Gallipolis Rotary Club

Attn: Shawn Siders

PO Box 214

Gallipolis OH 45631-0214

Please make all checks payable to the Gallipolis Rotary Club and put

Chile Disaster Relief in the memo line.

Thanking you,

Ram Gawande, D.G.

Helping Haiti From Afar

Tatiana Lundstrom, currently a Rotary Exchange student in Taipei, Taiwan and the exchange students in her district over there are helping out the Haiti relief effort. Their project is called "Hugs for Haiti", and what they do is offer hugs to people over there in exchange for donations to purchase a Shelter Box.  Their goal was to raise $1,000, but they have already reached that, so now they are working on their second Shelter Box.  Tatiana is the daughter of 6690 RYE Vice Chair Walter Lundstrom and his wife Gail.  

6690 Student Greg Miller, helps start a new Interact and Rotaract Clubs In Blagoveshchensk, Russia

Greg Miller is a Rotary Exchange Student living in Blagoveshchensk, Russia (that our club is sponsoring)

for for the 2009-2010 school year. He is 18 years old, and is taking this gap year between his graduation  from high school in Columbus, Ohio, and his entrance into Georgetown University in the Autumn of 2010. According to his blog, Greg received an email from the current president of the Vladivostok-Eco Rotaract Club asking him if he’d be interested in helping to create a Rotaract Club in Blagoveshchensk. He, of  course, agreed to help with this new club. He made a speech to his Rotary home club about it at their weekly meeting. There were mixed feelings about starting a Rotaract  club from the members, but the President supported it. Greg went online to the Rotary International website and read all he could about Rotaract to learn how it works. On November 27th, five members from the Khabarovsk Rotaract club arrived in Blagoveshchensk. The President, Dmitry Burchak, and five girls from his club. They met at the train station and five different Rotarians hosted each of the students at their home for the weekend.

On Friday afternoon, they made a presentation at a preventative medicine clinic run by one of Greg’s  host clubs members. They had about 30 young men and women from different universities around the city come to their presentation. They listened to them present about Rotary and Rotaract for over three  hours! They explained what Rotary does, and also told about what the Khabarovsk club and other clubs around Russia have done. Greg also had the opportunity to present (in Russia) telling them who he was, and how he help create Rotaract in their city. At the end of the meeting, they invited the participants to help with the public activism project that they would be carrying out the following day. They also invited them to attend the training session they would hold on Sunday, to start to train new members how to run Rotaract. They received a strong and interested response from all in attendance. They didn’t stop there. On Saturday morning, they made a presentation about Interact to a School #5 in  Blagoveshchensk. Greg shared about his experience at his High School, (St. Charles HS), where he was a member and President of the Interact club his senior year. Greg invited them to the training session on Sunday. That afternoon, they carried out their activism projected called “Quit Smoking-Eat Vitamins”. They went to a shopping center  owned by one of the Rotarians, and offered the people there the option to exchange their packs of cigarettes for an apple. They had about 15 students show up, both   from the presentation the day before and from School #5 to help them carry out the project. They collected over forty packs of cigarettes in just three short hours. As they were leaving they were stopped by a young journalist from the Amurskaya Pravda, the biggest newspaper in the Amur Oblast. She  questioned them about their project and about Rotaract. A few days later, a large article, complete with  a color picture, appeared on page 3 of the newspaper, giving them great advertising regarding Rotary, Rotaract and Interact. http://ampravda.ru2009/12/01/024083.html. To learn more about all the  mazing experiences Greg is having and how he is growing in Rotary, visit his blog at http://gregsrussianexchange.blogspot.com

Requirements for Outbound Exchange Students

Download in Adobe PDF Format

As an exchange student, you’re job is to be a goodwill ambassador representing Rotary, District 6690, and the US. People here in the US will judge our program on your behavior, and the people you touch overseas will literally get their strongest perception about the US from you (good or bad…). Part of being an effective goodwill ambassador is to be prepared, and because of that, the following learning requirements are mandatory parts of the program.

Four research papers and each paper should be 750-1000 words. The purpose of the papers is for you to be prepared for your exchange. Each paper must be emailed to WalterLundstrom@gmail.com 

1. What is Rotary? (Due 2 days before the December 5 YE weekend. Also bring a copy to the district interviews the same weekend)

2. USA, Ohio, and your home town. (Due one week before the February YE weekend. Also bring a copy to the YE weekend)

3. Your host country and city. (Due one week before the April YE weekend. Also bring a copy to the YE weekend)

4. The difference in culture between your home country and host country. This paper takes a lot of research, because you’re looking for the deep cultural differences, not music and food. (Due one week before the July YE weekend. Also bring a copy to the YE weekend)
    

Paper 1-3 are for all outbounds. Paper 4 is only for long term outbounds.

• In addition to the above papers, after you get your country match up, you’ll also need to translate the letter that was in your application to your new host language. Please email it to me, and also bring a copy to the next YE weekend. 

Failing to deliver any of these research papers or the translated letter on time, will jeopardize your exchange and may result in you not being part of the program!

When you get your country match, you must also start to learn your host language. There are numerous programs available. Rosetta Stone might be one of the best ones, but that is up to each student to find what works best for you and your budget. 

In a couple of months, you’ll need to get in touch with your sponsoring Rotary club to setup a time in April or May for you to do a 20 minutes Power Point presentation. I’ll give you more information about that later.

You have started a life changing experience that VERY few people go through. I don’t know the statistics for short term exchanges, but according to a National Geographic study last year, only one US high school student in 7,000 becomes an exchange student! You’re very special!

 

Exchange Stories & Photo Adventures

Learn More About Our New Exchange Students     Stories From Abroad  Our Out-bounds' Talk About Their Adventures  Must reading for anyone who wants to be an exchange student!!

Stuff Happening Around The World With 6690 Exchange Students To Read The Outbound Student's Adventures Click Here
Greg Miller is braving the Russian Winter.  Here he is at a Soviet War Memorial.	Robin Smith is mastering her blowgun technique in the Amazon Rainforest.
Sara Mauer (l) in a national park in Patagonia in Chile.	Tatiana Lundstrom with friends in Taiwan.
Sara Mauer at the bottom of the Earth.	Sheridan Rowley is having a blast in Japan.
Small World for Athens Exchange Students Danielle Fultz (6690 outbound in Belgium this year) and Mathieu Reyniers (6690 inbound from Belgium 2007-2008) ran into each other at a bistro in Brussels.	Alanna Hurdley with friends in Finland.
Danielle Fultz (4th from left) in Paris	HaiWeh Peng with German Exchange Student Niklas while on the Disney Trip.
Nina Kovacev (Croatia) with the drummer from the Rock Group AFI, after one of her concerts.  His girl friend is Croatian so he spoke to her in Croatian and gave her his set list.	Kayla Stock at Lake Como Italy

Laura

Braun Cano

Chapadao Da Sul Brazil

Dublin Worthington Rotary Club

Nike Christensen  Annika

Odenthal, Germany

Coshocton Rotary Club

Florian

Dufour

Liege, Belgium

Zanesville Rotary Club

Hai-Wei

Peng

Yonghe, Taiwan

Granville Rotary Club

Rodolfo Avelar

Teixeira Moreira

Londrina, Brazil

Delaware Rotary Club

Diego Esteban

Alvarado

Cifuentes  Chile

Hilliard Rotary Club

Caroline

Sevil

La Tour de Salvagny, France

Pike Country Rotary Club

Juan Carlos

Segovia Sanchez 

Ibarra, Ecuador

Lancaster Rotary Club

Sawarot

Limtragul

Muang, Thailand

Chillicothe First Capital Rotary Club

Martin

 Rutrle

Pisek, Czech Rep.

Athens Rotary Club

Jose

Aguirre

Irapuato, Mexico

Columbus Rotary Club

Yukino

Tsujimori

Nabari Shi, Japan

Lancaster Rotary Club

Nina

Kovacev 

Djurdjevac, Croatia 

Rotary Club of

Westerville Sunrise

Pablo

Moya

Catamarca, Argentina

Rotary Club of

Westerville Sunrise

January -January 

Catherine

Correa-Salgada

Santiago, Chile

Rotary Club of Westerville Sunrise