May 24, 2019 · 0 Comments
By Makayla Pereira
On May 21 2019, the Orangeville District Lions Club awarded one lucky student of Orangeville District Secondary School with a grant as part of the youth exchange program.
The grade 12 student Ibrahima Bah received a $1,350 grant which he will be using to travel to Japan on July 7 for one month as part of the the Youth Camp and Exchange Program (YCE).
The Orangeville Lions club has been gifting students with this travel grant for many years now. In 2018 three youth from Orangeville were gifted with $1,000 each in efforts to help them fulfil their dream of traveling the world.
the Lions YCE program began in the 1960 and was created to help to provide students with the ability to learn about the world by seeing it first-hand.
Across the world there are over 50 different Lions associations that participate in the exchange program. Each of these locations are available for the youth to choose to visit, from Sweden to Australia there are families willing to host the youth and camps for them to attend.
Any youth between the ages of 16 and 22 is eligible to apply to the exchange program through their community Lions association and a committee then picks up to three youth to send on the exchange program.
“The Orangeville lions has a committee that looks at the applications, then we speak to the applicants and generally speaking they’re just terrific people, terrific kids,” said Lions member Don Sinclair.
Sinclair goes on to say “My wife Janet and I are also hosting two students this year, one from Spain and one from Moldova.” He explains that the two young men will arrive on June 30 and will stay with his family for about a week before attending the youth camp on Lake Huron in Goderich, Ontario.
Bah will arrive in Tokyo and will be met by the local Lions members there, from here he will go to his host family in Japan.
Bah will be in Japan for one month and during his time there he will be staying with a host family. Shortly after his stay with the family he will move on to attending the youth camp in Japan where he will meet all the other children traveling there from all over the world. The camp will have activities for them and allow them to learn about Japan from a different perspective.
The Lions club stated the following on their website “With the mission of promoting international peace and understanding, the Youth Camp and Exchange Program (YCE) gives thousands of young people the opportunity to experience life in other cultures and gain a new understanding of the world through travel abroad.”
If you or someone you know is interested in applying for the Youth Exchange Program contact the Orangeville District Lions Club by email at info@orangevillelions.org or by phone at (226) 790-0623.