We couldn’t say it any better!
This past weekend, at EF High School Exchange Year's National Conference, I was asked to tell a story that could capture the massive impact one individual can have by getting involved in cultural exchange. Even as someone who loves data, I was quick to realize that I couldn’t nail this down as a number. Every story begins with an international exchange student coming to their own host family, with some combination of parents, siblings, cousins and neighbors. Attending schools with hundreds or thousands of classmates, teammates, lab partners, friends and teachers. Returning home to younger siblings, future partners, and new opportunities. The beauty of creating global families through our student exchange program is not in what we can see and know and measure. It’s in understanding that the impact will outrun us all, an indelible mark being left in the most unforeseen places, the effects playing out over generations. It’s in the planting of trees for someone else’s shade. That is what our exchange coordinators do every day, and why I am so proud to work with them.
