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ALUMNI LINK
A PUBLICATION
OF THE YFU-USA ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
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We have kept in touch for over 20 years now. I have visited them. They have visited me. My Danish sister spent her senior year with my family, and I went to Denmark for my other sister's wedding. This summer, my wife and I would like to bring our children over to see "their grandparents." You see, in Denmark, grandparents are identified as the mother's mother, mother's father, father's mother and father's father. Because they no longer have a son in Denmark, they have never had a child refer to them in person as Farmor and Farfar, so I know it will be a very special time. I also wanted to get in touch with the other 50 or so people who were in my exchange year, but before now YFU was never willing to share the list of names. I used to have a list from when we first went to Denmark, but it has been lost and I can no longer remember most of the names. I was one of the youngest in my exchange class, but I also had the distinction of being the group photographer. I believe I still have about 50 rolls of film that I took from our various excursions. I hope to dig them out and see about scanning some of them onto my class’s Alumni Contact Network webpage. Russ Kathrein Alumni Contact Network - Find Your Friends! My name is Tangi Padfield and I'm the NAC Project Manager for the Alumni Contact Network (ACN). The ACN was formed in order to find YFU alumni and reconnect them to YFU. An additional goal of the ACN is to help raise money for alumni development efforts and YFU scholarships. So far, ten countries and twenty-seven programs have Class Contacts and many ‘lost alumni’ have been found. I hope to develop the ACN into something similar to other reunion sites on the web. In the future, all alumni will be able to go to their class webpage, click on fellow alumni from their program, and instantly get caught up on each other’s lives. The Denmark 1980-81 page is a great example of what a class webpage can look like. Their class contact, Susan Cook, has done a wonderful job. She’s posted pictures and is adding alumni stories for her Yearbook Page. Please take a look at other Alumni Contact Network to see what's possible! Start finding your long-lost friends right away by being a Class Contact and helping YFU in the process! Tangi
Padfield
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As with the alumni working in the American Overseas office, most of these staff people have also volunteered for YFU. They have volunteered as Alumni Coordinators, Orientation Specialists, International Student Area Representatives and in many other volunteer positions. Anne Johnson of Utah reports, “I really felt strongly about giving back to the YFU organization because I had such a profound, life-changing experience as an exchange student. I credit my experience as an exchange student to receiving an academic scholarship to the university of my choice. I went back to Japan and did volunteer work for a year and a half and learned enough Japanese to let me test out of Japanese in college and graduate a semester early. I went back to Japan for a third time to work for a Japanese company with a great paycheck. And now I am a YFU employee! All because of a summer in Japan.” As a staff person or a volunteer, you can play a role just as meaningful as any of the staff members mentioned in the Alumni Link -- we look forward to hearing from you! Jeanne
Pierce |
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