This means we are committed to a number of features of hosting visiting teams. First, we believe in home stays. Hosting visiting teams members in our homes provides a unique opportunity to see how we live and how we approach the most basis facets of our lives. In turn, we get to know our visitors in a way that we would not know them if they did not share our home and our families with us. Secondly, we want to provide a complete and authentic view of our communities and our professions. We schedule visiting teams to observe and experience those things in our communities that we are most proud of, as well as those things from which they might learn of our struggles and the ways in which we are trying to deal with them. We try to schedule team members with the best in their profession during vocational days. But, we make sure that they also learn about the challenges faced by persons in their fields of work in our country. Finally, we take seriously the health and well being of visiting team members while they are in our district. This means planning a schedule with a proper pace, sufficient free time, and attention to the individual needs of team members. We want our visiting teams to see and experience everything in our district, and we want them to work hard at their objectives. But, we also want them to have fun together as a team and with us as their hosts...and new friends!

Practically speaking, hosting a visiting team means committing 3 or 4 days to an intensive experience of getting to know five strangers from another land and another culture, providing for their basic needs, helping them learn about things important to them and to us, and having some fun along the way.

We encourage clubs to work together to plan and then host visiting teams. Rather than two or more clubs in the same or adjacent towns planning separate one or two day schedules of home stays and activities, we ask clubs to work together to plan a more integrated and better paced three or four day schedule. Hosting clubs work with the GSE Committee to make sure the visiting team has the widest range of experiences and avoids redundancy in the activities planned for team.

We ask clubs to make the GSE the focus of their Rotary activities during the team's stay in their communities. This means involving a large number of members, and not just the GSE Committee and a few interested others, in the activities planned for the visiting team.

We try to know as much as possible about the visiting team members before they arrive. With this information we plan activities to meet the vocational and personal interests of each team member. Knowing about their families, their vocation, and their interests helps us in the short time they are with us to develop the meaningful relationships that are an objective of the GSE program in District 6220.

Being Selected as Host Club

Each year approximately six months prior to the scheduled exchange the GSE Committee announces to all clubs - in the district newsletter, on the district's web site, and in a letter to GSE chairmen and club presidents the opportunity to host the visiting team. Those clubs that indicate an interest in hosting the team are then considered as a four of five itinerary is put together for the team. Clubs in the same or adjacent communities are asked to cooperate in planning a hosting. If areas of the district are not represented in the itinerary, clubs are asked to consider hosting the team. The intention is to involve as many clubs in as many regions of the district as possible.

Clubs that have not hosted recently are given a preference in selection host or lead clubs. Clubs that are perceived to have done an outstanding job of hosting in the past are given a preference, also.

A Sample Schedule for a Visiting GSE Team