Keep your club YOUNG, get some excitement into your meetings, sponsor a RANZSE student
RANZSE the "twin matched" student exchange has now looking for 2017 students.RANZSE – what makes us different than the Rotary Youth Exchange (RYE)?
Briefly: the students are younger – aged 13.5 to 16 on January 1st of the year of participation. The exchange is shorter – the students spend 6 months together - 3 months with each family.
And it is just between Australia and us.
I’ve heard club members say that they’d love to have a Rotary Exchange student in their club, but the club members are too old or too busy to host a student – here is the exchange for you!
This exchange is basically between two families, facilitated by Rotary, and as such, is less of a commitment from the club: a $500 sponsorship fee from the club for successful applicants (to go towards RANZSE uniform/gear, polo shirt, jacket, backpack and/or duffle bag, passport holder and name-tag etc) with any excess helping to pay for program running costs.
Your club pays the cost of the student’s meals at any meetings you invite them to, and any cost of a mentor/counsellor from your club to support the students during the exchange.
For this commitment, you’ll have easily-obtained speakers for a few nights – the NZ studen before they go, talking about what they will present to their hosting Rotary club in Australia, the Australian student talking about where they are from and what they have done on the exchange, and once the NZ student returns from Australia, they can tell you about their experience there.
After a recent RANSEA Chair returned home from a week with the 21 Australian RANZSE students from Western Australia, Southern Australia, and New South Wales who are presently hosted in D9910, D9920, and D9930 (D9940 joins with the South Island Districts for the week-long “Safari”. Our Kiwi kids have a week-long Safari as well, when they are in Australia.) We all stayed together at the Lake Taupo Christian camp between Taupo and Turangi.
The kids went skiing (most of them for the first time), did high-ropes and wall-climbing, jet boating, paint-ball, went to a club in Turangi to watch the Wallabies lose to the All Blacks, and popped over to Rotorua for luging, Zorbing, and TePuia for Maori culture and geothermal activity. We also ate far too much food, and laughed – a lot! Oh, and five Australian lads can now do a credible Haka.
When attending the Taupo Rotary Club meeting, one Taupo club member noted that we tend to lose the ability to laugh spontaneously at “nothing” when we get older, but these students still have it – hopefully some of it rubs off on us as well!
The real bonus in this all is the students. Listening to them talk in the evening about how much they have learned about themselves and their own strengths, how they are coping with difficulties, and how much they appreciate the opportunity that they have been given.
Doing this short-term exchange at this time in their lives, well, it is life changing - and in a very good way.
Keep your club young, get some excitement at your meetings – sponsor a RANZSE student!
Max Patmoy
District 9930 RANZSE Chair 2015-18
Rotary Australia New Zealand Student Exchange
p: 06 836 5555
m: 027 279 3760
w: www.ranzse.org
A short term Australia and New Zealand student exchange designed for 13.5 to 16 year old students to experience
m: 027 279 3760
w: www.ranzse.org
A short term Australia and New Zealand student exchange designed for 13.5 to 16 year old students to experience
The cost to parents/students is approximately $4500 to cover airfares, insurance, week long Safari in the opposite country, bonding weekend in both countries, and spending money for their son/daughter. The sponsoring club’s contribution goes towards the cost of their student’s RANZSE gear (polo and rugby shirts, jacket, backpack and duffle bag, passport holder and nametag). Any excess goes to defray the cost of the exchange for the students.
CLICK HERE to download a PDF copy of the "Expression of Interest Form"
