Interested in sharing your culture, family, and home with an Inbound Student?
Learn more about the process of becoming a host family.
Any family can be an excellent host family if there is a willingness to show love and understanding to the student, and a commitment to make the student a part of your family, just as you would for your own children if they were on a year-long study abroad program.
Rotary Clubs are looking for host families to host for 3 to 4 months, with each student having three host families during their year in District 6220. This allows the student to experience the American culture from three different viewpoints, as the student learns how to live within your family structure.
If you’re interested, contact your local Rotary Club, or start a Host Family application here.
Successful families come in all forms — older couples whose children have grown up and left home, married couples with or without children, single parents, working parents, stay-at-home moms and dads — they can all make fantastic host parents.
There are a few necessary requirements:
As a general rule, if you’re going out and paying for your own children, you should expect to also pay for your Inbound student. Students are given a monthly stipend of about $100 from their local Rotary Club to help cover miscellaneous expenses, and they usually come with their own cell phone and additional spending money.
Our family is a very typical middle class American family. Both parents work: The mother works 4 days per week from 7:30-4:30; the father works at least 5 days a week. The father is often away on business trips lasting up to one month 3 times per year. We expect to treat our exchange student in a similar way to our own children, giving her a fair share of attention and time. We look forward to meeting her and learning about her life and country. We also look forward to helping her adapt to the USA and her new community. Our children have always assumed some of the household chores, most typically to help with family meal preparation and then to help clean up afterward. Our children are in charge of cleaning their own rooms and doing their own laundry. Keeping a clean and neat room is encouraged, and we expect the same of our exchange student. We will ask her to vacuum and clean some areas of the home and also to keep the bathroom neat and clean. Although we believe that school work and extra-curricular activities are important to our student, we expect her to participate in our family life, too. Our own children are expected to help with household chores so it is considered fair for their exchange sister to help out, too. We are happy to provide room and board, but we do expect her to use her own money for personal items and clothing, for entertainment when out with friends, or for costs incurred when participating in Rotary functions and trips. When we go on trips or to a restaurant for a meal, we will normally pay for the expenses of the exchange student. When she chooses to go places with friends, such as the movies, we expect her to use the monthly Rotary allowance for expenses. When she goes shopping for clothes, accessories, and other things, we expect she will use the Rotary allowance or money from home. We expect that the topic of money will be a matter for discussion between her and her Rotary Counselor. We believe that using the Rotary Club allowance wisely is a valuable experience for any young person.
A letter from a rotary host family