Illinois Valley Sunrise Rotary opens applications for long-term youth exchange

Illinois Valley Sunrise Rotary will begin accepting applications Tuesday, Aug. 15, for potential outbound students in the Long-Term Youth Exchange for the 2024-2025 academic year.

Students with an interest in foreign language ages 16 to 18 attending La Salle-Peru High School are encouraged to apply.

The Rotary Long Term Youth Exchange is designed to send (outbound) a local student to study abroad for a year while at the same receive (inbound) a student to live in the Illinois Valley for a year. In both cases students have almost a full year to prepare for their journey. In each location the Rotary Club arranges for the student to live with three local families in the course of the year.

Past outbounds from L-P have lived in countries, such as Norway, Netherlands, France, Belgium and Germany. Past inbounds have come to the Illinois Valley from Germany, France, Spain and Poland. Meetings for potential local host families will be later this year.

An informational meeting for potential outbound students and their parents will be 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 24, at L-P. The deadline for outbound student applications will be Friday, Sept. 8.

More information is available from IV Sunrise Rotarian Jennifer Dudek at 815-488-1760.