21 July 2009

Hello Club Presidents, Club YEOs, and Club Counselors:

As many of you know, youth exchange programs in the United States are required by the United States State Department to meet certain requirements. In addition, District 5190 RYE needs to meet the standards of the Council on Student International Educational Travel (CSIET) and the policies of Rotary International. Each year RI requires all RYE programs world wide to sign a document that they are following the youth exchange policies as set by the RI Board of Directors and by RI program staff. In addition, our program has an annual performance audit by a CPA as required by CSIET (this is required for us to place students in the Reno, Sparks and Incline Village clubs), and the State Department will implement a performance audit shortly. (It will be the same audit as the CSIET audit, thus we will have one audit for both CSIET and the State Department.)

Based on the comments from the most recent audit, and on a review of the RI youth exchange policies, we have made some changes to the procedures we follow in the District Youth Exchange program. And we will be making additional changes in the future. We understand that these changes may add some paper work to some of our procedures. Other changes will be changes in procedures and policies and will add additional tasks for the members of the District RYE Committee. While we do not invite many of these changes, our options are simple. We can make the changes and continue to offer an excellent youth exchange program. Or we can risk having either the State Department or RI putting our program on probation or suspending our program.

One change that we need to make will take effect as of today. We are no longer able to have club RYE Counselors conduct host family orientations. All host family orientations must be conducted by a member of the District RYE Committee. The reason for this change is that it is felt by CSIET and the State Department that those who conduct host family orientations need to have a higher level of training, and a greater knowledge of the RYE program than most club counselors have.

Because of this change in host family orientations, members of the District RYE Committee will be available to conduct host family orientations in all areas of D5190. And we will continue to have regional orientations. When such orientations are scheduled, we will send emails to all club counselors.