Student exchange to be launched with Russia next year

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A student exchange programme between Finland and Russia is to be introduced next year. The exchange programme will be organised by the Finland-Russia Society, which is currently searching for exchange students, host families, and for volunteers to act as support persons.
      The project is unique, as no organisation has been offering student exchange from Finland to Russia on a regular basis before.
     
The Finland-Russia Society has examined the possibility of arranging student exchange for a couple of years already, as eager students can be found in both Finland and Russia, said Tuija Mäkinen of the Society’s Tampere office.
      Previously, ASF International has arranged an exchange place for at least one determined Finnish student in Russia.
      Moreover, a few Russian exchange students have been placed in Finland by the YFU International Exchange, which is now a partner of the Finland-Russia Society.
     
Students will be placed in the St. Petersburg region - except for in the city itself - and in Nizhni Novgorod (the former Gorky), which is a twin city of Tampere in Central Russia.
      Mäkinen assumes that the most difficult part of the project will be to find enough Finnish host families.
      According to the YFU, there have to be two and a half families available for each student, just in case there should be any difficulties.
      The exchange programme lasts five or ten months. The initial target is to offer exchange for five students from both countries.
     
The applicants and the families will be interviewed in the course of February through March and the exchange students will be chosen in March. The Finnish students will be tutored in the period of May through June, and they will take off on the third week of August, as the schools in Russia start at the beginning of September.
      The Russian students will be 15 to 16 years of age, and in Russia they go to the ninth or tenth grade of the comprehensive school, which equals the first year of Finnish upper secondary school.


Links:
  The American-Scandinavian Foundation (ASF)
  Youth for Understanding (YFU)

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