Rotary Australia New Zealand Student Exchange (RANZSE).
RANZSE the "twin matched" student exchange is now looking for 2020 students.
RANZSE – what makes us different than the Rotary Youth Exchange?
Briefly: the students are younger – aged 13.5 to 16 on January 1st of the year of participation. The exchange is shorter – the students spend 6 months together - 3 months with each family. No billeting required by your club!
I’ve heard Rotary club members say that they’d love to have a Rotary Exchange student in their club, but the club members are too old or too busy to host a student – well, here is the student exchange for you!
This exchange is basically between two families, facilitated by Rotary, and as such, is less of a commitment from the club. Just a $550 sponsorship fee from the club for successful applicants (to go towards RANZSE uniform/gear, polo shirt, jacket, backpack and/or duffle bag, passport holder and name-tag etc) with any excess helping to pay for program running costs.
Your club pays the cost of the student’s meals at any meetings you invite them to, and any cost of a mentor/counsellor from your club to support the students during the exchange.
For this commitment, you’ll have easily-obtained speakers for a few nights – the NZ student before they go, talking about what they will present to their hosting Rotary club in Australia, the Australian student talking about where they are from and what they have done on the exchange, and once the NZ student returns from Australia, they can tell you about their experience there.
After a recent RANSEA 
Chair returned home from a week with the 21 Australian RANZSE students from Western Australia, Southern Australia, and New South Wales who are presently hosted in D9910, D9920, and D9930 (D9940 joins with the South Island Districts for the week-long “Safari”. Our Kiwi kids have a week-long Safari as well, when they are in Australia.) We all stayed together at the Lake Taupo Christian camp between Taupo and Turangi.
Chair returned home from a week with the 21 Australian RANZSE students from Western Australia, Southern Australia, and New South Wales who are presently hosted in D9910, D9920, and D9930 (D9940 joins with the South Island Districts for the week-long “Safari”. Our Kiwi kids have a week-long Safari as well, when they are in Australia.) We all stayed together at the Lake Taupo Christian camp between Taupo and Turangi.The kids went skiing (most of them for the first time), did high-ropes and wall-climbing, jet boating, paintball, went to a club in Turangi to watch the Wallabies lose to the All Blacks, and popped over to Rotorua for luging, Zorbing, and TePuia for Maori culture and geothermal activity. We also ate far too much food, and laughed – a lot! Oh, and five Australian lads can now do a credible Haka.
When attending the Taupo Rotary Club meeting, one Taupo club member noted that we tend to lose the ability to laugh spontaneously at “nothing” when we get older, but these students still have it – hopefully, some of it rubs off on us as well!
The real bonus in this all is the students. Listening to them talk in the evening about how much they have learned about themselves and their own strengths, how they are coping with difficulties, and how much they appreciate the opportunity that they have been given.
Doing this short-term exchange at this time in their lives, well, it is life changing - and in a very good way.
Find out all about this short term student exchange at www.ranzse.co.nz and download an expression of interest form here
