Rotary Youth Exchange — is one of the programs of the world-famous Rotary movement. The essence of the program is that local Rotary clubs, in this case the Rotary Club Cherkasy Center, select a student from Cherkasy schools aged 15 and older and send him or her to the United States for a year-long study. The Rotary Youth Exchange program is very similar to the FLEX program, the difference is that the applicant's parents pay for travel and insurance costs themselves. The advantage of Rotary Youth Exchange is that the scholarship is paid by the local Rotary Club and is usually much higher than in other programs. The participant lives in 2-3 Rotary families (alternately) and must attend occasional Club meetings. The difference of this program is that the next year after a visit to the United States, an American student can come to Cherkasy for one year and study in a Ukrainian school and live in 2-3 families. Cherkasy Rotarians pay a monthly stipend to the program participants.
It is clear that applicants must have a good command of English and a desire to spend a year in a distant country.
The Rotary Youth Exchange in Cherkasy has been operating since 2008, when Titus Stout first came to Cherkasy, and Stanislav Kushchenko (school #17) spent a year in the United States. Later, Victoria Bryk (PPC) participated in the program.
In the 2015-2016 academic year, a participant of the Rotary Youth Exchange program was a high school student Tatiana Gnatenko, who studied at State College Area High School in Pennsylvania, USA, since September 2015.
During the war, Rotary's rules for the project changed: only Ukrainian participants went on the program and all expenses were covered by the Rotary movement. In 2022-2023, Sophia Liapkalo and Anna Proskura were in Germany on this program. Oleksandr Lementovskyi and Orest Shemshur spent the entire 2023-2024 academic year in the United States. They became finalists of the 2023 program. In 2024, 6 participants have already become finalists, 5 will go to the United States and one to Belgium.
To participate in the program, you should contact the principal of the gymnasium. Preference is given to active students studying in the 9th and 10th grades of Cherkasy schools, members of Interact. The selection is conducted by the Rotary Club Cherkasy Center and the Rotary District.
In the photos: Sofia Lyapkalo and Anna Proskura in Germany
The last photo shows Oleksandr Lementovskyi at the Rotary headquarters in Evanston, Illinois (2024).
