Rotary Friendship Exchange – District 6250 (Wisconsin) and District 2231 (Poland) – Open to All District 6250 Rotarians.
Please read fully … contact Edwin Bos at edwin@bosdesignbuilders.com if interested. If you don’t receive a confirmation your interest has not been noted. Please resend.
What: Rotary Friendship Exchange (home and hotel stays, meetings and tours) with various Rotary Clubs and Rotarians in Poland. Return leg will bring Polish Rotarians to our District. See also:
Rotary International Website RFE Information
When: District 6250 travel to 2231 … approximately September 22nd to October 3rd, 2022. District 2231 to 6250 … TBD but probably 2023. No visa requirements in either direction, just a passport.
Where: Primarily northern Poland. Fly into Wroclaw and then by train to Poznan, Szczecin, Bydgoszcz, Olsztyn and Gdansk. Transport between cities by train. In nearly all these cities District 6250 has either participated in Rotary Global Grants, offered Ukrainian refugee support or sent Exchange Students. We will see a friendly face every time we step off the train. See also map below.
Who: Maximum of 12 interested Rotarians, spouses and/or family members. If oversubscribed / too much interest, we will use District 6250 RFE policy parameters to put the final group together. Note that the policy favors RFE novices. If you travel to Poland you are expected to host and to enlist your club members to host when the Polish Rotarians visit Wisconsin.
How: TBD but probably meet in Warsaw and then fly together to Wroclaw. RFE (10 days or so), must be willing to let others organize your life and to go with the flow during the RFE. Private travels within Europe both before and after the complete RFE are your choice. Final District 6250 RFE group will meet in Wisconsin at least once prior to the trip to work out details, presentations etc.
Costs: Round-trip cost for an open-jaw 12-hour flight to Wroclaw (via Warsaw) is around $500 right now. There will be train and bus travel expenses. Typically, as part of the RFE, you are hosted by local Rotarians, however, given the refugee situation in Poland at the moment we will need to be flexible as this may not always be possible or practical for our hosts. These details are being worked out by the Trip Leaders.
Timing: We hope to have the final group identified by the end of July 2022.
Trip Leader 6250: Rotarian Edwin Bos whose wife is Polish (she will not be joining) and who first visited Poland in 1988 and has extensive experience there.
Trip Leader 2231: Rotarian Irma Kaminska from Olsztyn. Irma has extensive international experience. In 2019 Irma led a Global Grant that involved our Columbus, Mayville, Waupun and Beaver Dam Clubs. Irma spoke at our District conference in 2020 and she currently serves as Rotary Poland’s “Refugee Disaster Chair” and, in that role, provides invaluable assistance to our District in identifying worthwhile and meaningful projects.
Please let Edwin know if interested at the e-mail given above. Questions are welcome but please realize that very few details of the trip have been worked out. Firm interest appreciated given the trip is only three months away. At the end of July participants will be asked for a $500 deposit which will be fully refunded upon return. Sorry to have to do this but we need to be certain that we only have seriously interested people signed up and we need to be certain that everyone participates in the full RFE.
Map of Trip / Area
PDG, Edwin Bos
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