GRSP IN DECEMBER

By the time you receive this newsletter, many students will already be out for the Christmas holidays. For those of you who hosted students during the Thanksgiving holidays, you will remember it always, as many students cooked dishes from their countries to share with your families. My extended family has been the beneficiary of dishes from all over the world – from fabulous homemade chocolates, Swedish meatballs and Danish to tabbouleh and Turkish coffee. Every student that comes through the program talks about how wonderful our Thanksgiving holiday is.

With Christmas on the horizon, we are madly planning our Rotary Christmas parties, so be sure to include your student and if there are other GRSPs on campus, it is always fun to invite them as well. Just be sure it doesn’t conflict with their hosting club’s Christmas plans. As usual, the students are planning trips around the US, so be sure that your students understand that they can’t make a car trip to California in one day. Many students come from countries that they can cross in a matter of hours, so they don’t think twice about a trip to the west coast here. Also be sure that your student is not alone in their dorm on campus. If they are rooming with another international student, it might also be fun to include that other non-GRSP international student in your plans. Just tell your student that you are open to that idea and let them extend your invitation. Remind your student to take their passport even when they are driving in a car or going on a bus. They may have to fly back home if their ride does not work out or if there were an emergency.

ENDOWMENT NEWS

This coming year the Endowment will be subsidizing the tuition, room and board with $6,000 per student. Also, calculations are being doubled-checked to be sure that those clubs that donated $50 or more per capita to the Endowment last year will also be receiving an incentive check soon. I have it on good authority that District 6900 clubs will be receiving many of those incentive checks.

Please remind your treasurers to send in your GRSP Endowment contributions before the end of the year, so that there will never be an issue with the Internal Revenue Service about which year you made your donation.

PLANNING FOR NEXT YEAR

Because of the high cost of tuition, many clubs are partnering to host a student. This is a great method to reduce the burden of costs, but can be tricky when selecting a student. There are many ways to partner – some clubs have equal partnerships and others have partnerships based on the number of Rotarians in each club, sharing the cost by percentage. There are as many ways of selecting a student as there are partnerships in the district, but your trustee can be of tremendous help. We do have some partnership opportunities in our district for next year, so if your club is interested in participating in the program, please notify your trustee.

We also have another opportunity for clubs that find the expense of GRSP too daunting to participate. It does require more work from the Clubs, but can allow a Club to participate at substantially less. A Club or combination of two clubs could get in the program for just $6,000. The Endowment would match that donation for a student and the Club could offer a student that has already been accepted by the University the opportunity to be a part of the Georgia Rotary Student Program. Please understand that you will have to wait until May or June in order to start searching for a student and you must have a good working relationship with your university of choice. You must have the ability to review applications, which can be difficult with the European Union restrictions on data delivery. The primary purpose of this program is actually not financial, but it was conceived to assist the Program with diversity, which has increasingly become an issue. This year, the Dunwoody Rotary Club tried the program with Oglethorpe University and we were able to get a student from Ethiopia. It had been many years since we have had a student from Ethiopia and we are hopeful she will tell others back home about her experience.

Please speak with your trustee about the pilot program, if you are interested. We are limited on how many spots, so it will be best to get in line right now.

THOMAS PEACE AWARD

The Barbara M. And Donald L. Thomas Peace Award of $1,500 is given by the Roswell Rotary Club to a deserving member of the current year’s GRSP class who exhibits the spirit of the GRSP program and who is in need of additional financial assistance. An application must be submitted by the sponsoring club, along with a letter from the president of your club or host family and a letter from the student explaining how he or she intends on using the award and how it might impact their life. The deadline for receiving the application is February 15, 2020. Please contact Jacque Digieso at (770) 851-3435 or at her email address of digieso@bellsouth.net for an application.

OSLO SCHOLARSHIP

This scholarship is still a major award to a US student and is an all-expense paid trip to Oslo, Norway next summer. Rotarian families are indeed eligible. The scholarship is open to students who are between the ages of 20-24, single and have completed their college sophomore year. The student will travel to Oslo, Norway for classes beginning on June 20 and ending on July 31, 2020. The application must be turned in to the GRSP office no later than December 31, 2019. Ask your trustee for details or check out our website at www.grsp.org . We were fortunate last year to have Joshua Partridge recommended by the Rotary Club of Columbus. His recollections of the six weeks in Norway can be found in the September newsletter.