GSE – GROUP STUDY EXCHANGE
Visit the website of the Danish GSE teams – www.gseteam.dk
Group Study Exchange, an educational activity of the Rotary Foundation, offers a unique person-to-person opportunity for young business and professional men and women in the initial years of their professional life. The programme provides travel grants for teams of business people and professionals across paired districts in different countries, enabling them to study the institutions and ways of life of their hosts, to develop personal and professional acquaintances and exchange ideas. A team may consist of four non-Rotarian business or professional people and a District Governor’s Representative.
Trips vary from 4 to 6 weeks where team members study the hosts country’s institutions and way of life, observe their own vocations as practiced abroad, develop personal and professional relationships, and exchange ideas. Travelling with a sense of mission derived from the desire to learn and promote understanding, these persons bring personal knowledge of their own country to the thousands they meet while abroad. From their study of another country their observations of its customs, their meetings and discussions with its people . come many opportunities for the development of understanding and lasting friendships.
Reciprocity is a key to the Group Study Exchange programme. Over a one-year period each of the paired districts, generally, must both send and receive a team.
A district selects a team of outstanding persons, who represent a cross-section of business and professions in the district, and sends them to a district in another country for a study programme of not less than four weeks nor more than six weeks.
An important feature of the programme is the involvement of large numbers of non-Rotarians as well as Rotarians. To publicise the programme properly, select candidates, and host the team from a paired district requires the active participation of the majority of Rotarians in a district. The co-operation of non-Rotarians of all ages and every economic, social and cultural background as possible adds immeasurably to the educational value of the exchange.
