"When you're the Youth Exchange Counselor, what should you do?" That's what I thought in July 2006, when I agreed to do it for the first time. I had some ideas. I got a few answers. I found some info on-line. But I didn't find any single, complete, easy resource to answer my question. So I listened, read, experiment-ed, and learned. What l learned I organized into rules and sub-rules. I built this web site to be a single, complete, easy resource to answer my question, and to share my answer with you. Here's what I've done so far:

    First, I wanted to create a good Youth Exchange Counselor goal. I wanted my goal to be short, simple, ambitious, and inspiring. I came up with: Give the student a great experience.

    Next, I wanted to create rules to meet my goal. Like my goal, I wanted my rules to be short, simple, ambitious, and inspiring. I wanted them to be comprehensive, to address all aspects of the exchange experience. I wanted them to be consistent, using the same form and style. And I wanted them to be general, to allow me to create sub-rules to help me follow the rules themselves. I thought of all the people, and groups of people, that would be involved in giving any exchange student a great experience. So I created rules to address those people with a more specific goal: to help everyone involved help everyone else involved give the student a great experience.

    Using that goal, I created twenty-one rules. I created one rule for each person or group that could help give an exchange student a great experience. My rules included "Rule 19. Help the club give the student a great experience.", and its reciprocal, "Rule 9. Help the student give his club a great experience." Then, to help me

follow those rules, I created sub-rules like "Rule 19.1. Send around a "Fun with [student] Sign-up Sheet" in which club members commit to showing the student a good experience.", and "Rule 9.1. Help the student prepare for and rehearse his speech to the club." Throughout the year, I followed dozens of sub-rules, to follow my rules, to meet my goal. And I feel that I clearly did meet my goal: to help everyone involved help everyone else involved give Luke from Poland a great experience.

    In July 2007, I delivered an interactive presentation to the South Central (U.S.) Rotary Youth Exchange (SCRYE) on "Training the Youth Exchange Counselor". Audience participation produced lots of ideas. I converted many into additional sub-rules. In August, I reviewed Rotary Code of Policies, Section 41.080. It states: "The certification process requires all club and district Youth Exchange programs to provide Rotary International with evidence that they have adopted the guidelines...." I saw that the guidelines radically changed the answer to the question, "When you're the Youth Exchange Counselor, what should you do?"

    Now, each "exchangee" will have two types of counselors: a "host" (inbound) and a "sponsor" (outbound). Each type has its own duties, though the guidelines mix them together. So I donned my lawyer hat, I dissected the guidelines, I segregated host from sponsor guidelines, I rewrote wordy guidelines into simple rules, I included citations to the Rotary Code of Policies section number, I tweaked my original 21 rules into 24 rules, and I integrated it all to produce two sets of comprehensive, discrete, clean, simple rules.

    A "counselor" faces one of two questions. This web site answers both. (1) "When you're the host counselor, what should you do?" Just follow the host rules. (2) When you're the sponsor counselor, what should you do?" Just follow the sponsor rules. But is it really that easy? Yeah, it's really that easy. Just follow the rules!