Many Geneva families have hosted students from around the world in their homes as part of the Rotary Club’s youth exchange program, and now more families are needed for this school year or next.
“The biggest problem for us is finding host families,” said Chris Reiss, the officer in charge of the local program.
Families have welcomed students from Brazil, Argentina, France, Japan, Taiwan and Hungary, Reiss said.
“The most powerful force in the promotion of international understanding and peace is exposure to different cultures,” the Rotary training handbook reads. “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 for 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 of international understanding.”
Reiss knows firsthand the benefits of becoming a host family. In 2001, when he and his family lived in Minnesota, they hosted Javier from Chile. They shuffled one son into the furnace room to provide Javier his own room.
Reiss recalls watching the events of 9/11 with him, and the family formed a deep bond over the months. Javier returned for Reiss’ son’s wedding and still keeps in touch, Reiss said. That’s also the case for one Geneva family who still is very close with its former student from Mexico, he said.
“That’s what we’re aiming for,” Reiss said.
One notion he said he often has to dispel for potential hosts is that the exchange student will become a best friend for a son or daughter, Reiss said.
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“That’s just not the case,” he said. “I tell host families it’s like you are bringing another sibling in … they like them, but sometimes they hate them too. It really changed the dynamic in our house to have a third.”
It’s become harder to find hosts, perhaps because of tightened security and fear after 9/11, he said. For Geneva students, it can be tough to convince them to go overseas during their senior year and miss events such as prom and graduation.
Still, his children benefited greatly from hosting, he said. One son has traveled internationally since graduating high school.
“I’m pretty sure that ties to his experience,” Reiss said. “I’m thrilled with that.”
Typically, the organizers like to line up three hosts, with each family taking a few months, for a student’s yearlong stay to provide a range of experiences, Reiss said. Families don’t have to have school-age children, but it is encouraged. Host families also are encouraged to show students an American life and provide them a bedroom and space to study. Rotary members invite the exchange student to their weekly breakfast meetings and exchange students typically meet with other Rotary exchange students in the Chicago area for events.
Mary Swanson of Geneva hosted an exchange student earlier this year and now is experiencing the flip side of the program — her son Jeremy is spending his senior year in France.
She said her son approached her during his sophomore year about spending a year abroad, and, after doing research, he settled on the Rotary exchange program. After he befriended Igor Honore, a Rotary student from France, in a class at Geneva High School, they decided to host Igor for a few months as a way to learn more about the program Jeremy would be participating in the following year.
“We didn’t know a lot about the expectations, but we were told to do with him what you would do with your own son,” when it came to things like curfew or chores, Swanson said. They also took him to Jeremy’s college visits, to the Chicago Auto Show, to a hockey game and to eat deep-dish pizza.
After Igor left, Jeremy followed to live with a different host family in Lille, France, until next summer, she said.
She encourages families to consider hosting.
“(Her husband) Bob and I were surprised that it’s hard to find volunteers,” she said. “It was really fun to share our culture with someone else.”