Exchange Students And Ambassadorial Scholars - 2003/2004 

Rotary Foundation Scholarships

The Club nominated a strong candidate - Mark Wayland - to the District for a Rotary World Peace Scholarship.  In a very close result, Mark was runner up.  The District was so impressed with him that it arranged for adjoining District 9810 to interview him and he was successful.  Subsequently, Mark was successful at the International Selection and was allocated his first choice Rotary Centre for International Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution in Paris.

The Club has maintained its remarkable record of identifying a successful candidate in each of the three years of the program.

District did not offer an Ambassadorial Scholarship in this year.  However, Club member Peter Rogers was Counsellor to incoming scholar Andre Hoffman from Germany and Rob Nethercote is Counsellor to Beth Zack from the USA.

Student Exchange

This year the Club supported outbound exchangee Emma Palmer (MacRobertson Girls High School) who travelled to Hungary in January 2004.  Emma has progressed to be a very competent student and communicator with Kevin Sheehan as her counsellor.

The Club nominated two potential exchangees who have been confirmed by District 9800 as outbound exchange students for January 2005.  Tom Fincher (Trinity Grammar) will travel to Thailand and Svetlana Andrienko (MacRobertson Girls High School) will travel to France.  Support requirements are now being put in place through the appointment of Counsellors.

We have assisted in progressing District Exchange Committee activities, The Lord Somers Camp nomination, raising the profile of our Club's Student Exchange Program, introducing initiatives to establish a funding base which have all contributed to a busy 2003/04 Rotary year.

To the Rotarians reading this Annual Report, please be aware that the Student Exchange Program will cease to exist unless more host families, counselors and support is forthcoming.  At one stage this year, our District struggled to accommodate more than three out of the eighteen inbound exchangees.  With substantial effort, the District finally accommodated seventeen exchangees.  District cannot continue to process Outbound Exchange Applications unless we accommodate Inbound Exchange Applications.  Our Club has the capacity to accommodate more than one annual exchangee if we set our mind to it.  Let us "Lend a Hand" to the Student Exchange Program.