Cultural Exchange: Professionals head overseas

Clean drinking water was scarce there, so the group worked with Indian Rotary members to raise money to build a water desalination plant through a Rotary grant.

Now, two local professionals are hoping that they can create a similar impact during another Missouri Rotary cultural exchange trip, this time to Germany.

Springfieldians Heather Landwer, director of donor services for Community Foundation of the Ozarks, and Nina Rao, reporter for the Springfield News-Leader are among this year’s five-person delegation from Rotary District 6080, which covers central and southern Missouri.

The group will spend the month of June in eastern Germany to learn more about the culture and the business climate. A similar delegation from Germany’s District 1950 arrived April 14 to spend four weeks in the Show-Me State.

According to Group Study Exchange District Chairman Gordon Brown, the point is to develop better understanding between nations.

“We have vocational experience, where they can learn how we do things and we understand how they do things in their given field. It’s an exchange of ideas,” Brown said. “It’s also somewhat of a cultural exchange – we get to know more about the area we visit, and they get to know about our area, too.”

Rao said learning about different business climates and getting a more international perspective will be refreshing.

“You have to see how things work in other places to understand how things work at home,” she said. “We’re going to learn. As a tourist, you learn about history and all that, but we’ll be learning about the current civic and business climate, and I think that will be really interesting.”

Rather than staying in hotels, exchange group members stay with local families, a fact that Landwer said offers unique opportunities for program participants.

“You can always learn a lot from travel, but actually living with families and seeing how people live is different from a hotel,” Landwer said. “You get to learn what their everyday lives are about.”

Team members agreed that cultural understanding is important, especially considering the constantly expanding presence of international business in the U.S. market and vice versa.

“I’m excited to teach them about Missouri, and the U.S. in general, because it’s important to send good diplomats out into the world these days,” Landwer said.

The Missouri group comprises a Rotarian team leader – this year’s leader is Jacqueline Howard from Phelps County Regional Medical Center in Rolla – and four non-Rotarian team members. Joining Landwer, Rao and Howard are Amy Randles and William Stolz, both professors at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Potential participants must be between the ages of 25 and 40. They are nominated by Rotary members and then go through an application and interview process.

The delegation will leave from Kansas City International Airport June 1, with Rotary picking up the group’s airfare. Brown said Rotary also provides language training.

Upon their return, Brown said team members will be asked to speak at various functions about what they’ve experienced and what can be learned from other cultures.

Group Study Exchange Participants

Jacqueline Howard, (team leader) Rolla, director of psychiatric services, Phelps County Regional Medical Center

Heather Landwer, Springfield, donor services director, Community Foundation of the Ozarks

Amy Randles, Jefferson City, German teacher, University of Missouri

Nina Rao, Springfield, reporter, Springfield News-Leader

William Stolz, Columbia, archivist and researcher, University of Missouri[[In-content Ad]]