In middle school Lily Gardner Jonsek’s mother took in a Japanese exchange student. “She was a twelve year old girl from Japan who spoke little English. Rika was the first of many exchange students for my family. My mother was a single mother of four, but somehow there was always enough room and time and food to bring another child into our home and our lives. Sharing my home with these kids from around the world did something to me. I had only twice been out of the South and had never traveled outside our country, but I emerged from these experiences with the conviction that I was a citizen of the world.”
Today Jonsek is doing her best to foster more exchanges. She says, “I work primarily with exchange scholarship programs administered by the Department of State with the explicit focus of combating xenophobia on both sides of the exchange. I’m passionate about this, and I want these programs to have a greater presence in our area. Of course, when the students are active in the community and people get the chance to meet them, that will increase interest.”
Yet there is a considerable hurdle to the program: “To get them here, we have to have host families first.”
Jonsek continues, “I work with scholarship programs that offer the life-changing opportunity to spend a year in the United States to teens in countries where opportunities are limited and the potential for conflict between our countries is all too real. I hope to foster many relationships like I had with Rika.”
WIIFM? (“What’s in it for me?”) “These programs benefit our community,” believes this mother of an infant son. “We become more grateful for the rights and privileges we, unlike millions around the world, enjoy every day. We become more aware of and compassionate about the challenges so many face. We come to know ourselves in a deeper way, and find new solutions to our own problems in the process. We also have lots of fun, discovering the same old places through the eyes of a youngster newly arrived on our shores. We gain brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. Our family expands across our community and the globe, and with it friendship, kindness and love replace ignorance, indifference and conflict.”
There are teens who have won scholarships but are waiting to hear from a family willing to take them in – before the end of June deadline, says Jonsek.
More information at 415-359-6833 or studentexchangelily@gmail.com.
Luise Wagner was a German exchange student at Caddo Magnet HS in 2015-2016. The tears in her eyes on her last day, she said, reflected her affection for the friendly people of Shreveport.