Annemarie Böker celebrates her birthday and the holidays (below) with the Hohlstein family, RC of Atlanta

Charlott Lundberg (Kalmar, Sweden) with her Americus family

Brazillian GRSP student Gabriel Deller Aguiar, his father Natal and his mother Rose (front) enjoyed the holidays and cooked a traditional Brazilian dinner for RC of Griffin host family Anna and Skipper Burns

As the Christmas holidays end, we are happy to have our students, who had the good fortune to travel over the holidays, return to our homes and their universities and begin classes. Enjoy the photos from some of those holiday events!

So far, the grades coming in to the GRSP home office have been good. Encourage your students to keep up that good work and maintain good grades, as transcripts will be available to them at the end of the year. In the past many hosts wondered if it made any difference for students whose courses would not transfer to their home country. LET ME REMIND YOU AND THEM, that their transcript can be a valuable resume builder. Future employers will wonder what they did for their year in Georgia and a strong transcript can be the difference between a good job and a GREAT job. Your students were told this at the beginning of their year, but another reminder can keep them on track for a successful finish to their year.

Many students traveled with their host families and some traveled with each other in other to expand their cultural experiences in other areas of the US. We like to encourage our students to see the diversity throughout the US and traveling over the holidays is a great way to see those differences in this great country.

Selection for Next Year

The selection process last year was interesting, but this year just may beat all. With the anxiety regarding GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in the European Union, we were unable to send out the Selection Book via the internet. There was concern after an electronic form of the selection book was published on the internet several years ago and we at GRSP felt it wise this year to revert to our old snail mail methods, so as not to expose our Endowment to a possible $20 Million penalty. We had to get addresses of our president elects and then, of course, had to use addresses for the clubs or the current presidents when we didn’t have an address for the president elects. In addition, printing the books at the last minute took some time. Most of us didn’t receive the Selection Books until the week before Christmas, so we were left scrambling at the last minute to make our selections. We asked for and were granted an extra week to make our decisions. In addition, we gained a couple of clubs and lost a couple of clubs at the last minute, which left some partnerships unable to partner for a student. It will be fun for those clubs forming new partnerships to get to know the host families from other clubs. For those of us who have hosted several students over the years, that is actually an unexpected benefit to being a part of the GRSP family – getting to know Rotarians from other clubs when the students are met at the airport, when the host families attend Conclave for training, exchanging the student over the holidays, getting them to student weekends and, of course, the District Conference. I have it on good authority that the students will have an entry in the Big Wheels Race at the Conference!

Strategic Planning and Our Beta Project

GRSP leadership has known for quite some time that change was needed in the program. The increasing cost of tuition, the decline in international students desiring an American education and the difference in young people in general have all come together in a perfect storm for GRSP. With some teeth gnashing and hair pulling, GRSP leadership finally hired the Fanning Institute from the University of Georgia to walk us through the process. Several efforts over the years for strategic planning “on the cheap” (i.e., no cost) ended up being a waste of everyone’s time. We all felt that paying for planning would elevate the process for everyone. One of the many things we are working on is the lack of diversity in the selection of students that we are bringing into the program. Many factors contribute to the problem, including poor advertising from GRSP, lack of knowledge from the clubs picking students and the decrease in applications from qualified students. My own student this year and last year had to travel several hours by train to take the SAT and many students do not want to invest that much time when they have no assurance that they will receive the scholarship.

An idea was proposed to allow the clubs to go directly to the university they have been working with and select a student from the students that had already been accepted by the university. All other rules for the program will be kept intact. We are hopeful that this will assist in our efforts for more diversification and perhaps even possibly reduce the cost to the club by offering a reduced scholarship. We are hopeful that we will have one club that will volunteer to try this method.

MLK Leadership Weekend

This student weekend taking place at Oglethorpe University is sponsored by the Rotary Clubs of Dunwoody, North Atlanta, Gainesville, Brookhaven and Buckhead (in teh form of funding, host families or both), who are madly getting ready to host our students. This is the only weekend other than Conclave and District Conference that is a required weekend for our students, as they learn how to make a difference in the world, build leadership skills and complete a community service project. The students will meet Friday at noon at the Center for Civil and Human Rights in downtown Atlanta, where they will learn a little bit about our rich history during the civil rights movement. Sitting at the rendition of a drugstore counter with headphones filled with hatred is something few students and even this Southern-raised gal will never forget. During this weekend, the only one of its type for the year, the students will be immersed in what Rotary means to the world and what the world means to Rotary. Some of our own Rotarians find this weekend of particular benefit to them and join in the activities.