Chinese students need host families
Published 10:13 pm Sunday, June 15, 2008
Fifty students from China’s Sichuan province, where an earthquake resulted in the death of nearly 70,000 people last month, are scheduled to spend three weeks in Snohomish County beginning in July.
The students need host families. Compass USA, the organization behind the trip, hopes Snohomish County residents will volunteer for the job as a way to help the province emerge from devastation.
The trip has been officially planned for about six months, but some of the Chengdu families have been saving money for years to send their children to the Puget Sound region, said Denice MacKenzie, program director for Compass USA.
Only about half the students have host families scheduled, MacKenzie said.
The students, who range in age from 13 to 16 years old, will arrive July 18 and leave Aug. 9. They all have some English language skills but are coming to the U.S. to work toward fluency in the language.
The earthquake that rocked Sichuan and surrounding provinces on May 12 left many Americans with ties to the region feeling helpless. Ralph Davis, former Snohomish mayor and a retired Snohomish High School teacher, spent an academic year in Chengdu in 1985 and 1986 and has visited the region several times since then.
“It’s a shame that we’re not doing anything, but what would we do?” he said.
Even philanthropic donations to quake relief efforts in China have been tepid, compared with the response after the 2004 tsunami in Asia and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Chengdu wasn’t as hard-hit by the 7.9-magnitude quake as other areas of the province, where schools crumbled atop students huddled inside.
The Compass USA students survived the quake, MacKenzie said. Americans can help by playing host to them while they’re here.
Host families must be willing to transport their students to and from Park Ridge Community Church in Bothell each day. The program is not religiously-based but is using the church’s facilities as a base for activities that will take place throughout the region.
Host families should also be prepared to provide three meals each day to the students. Each exchange student must have his or her own bed, but the student can share a bedroom with another child.
Each household that hosts a student must be made up of more than one person, whether it’s a parent and at least one child or two adults. Prospective host families should expect a home visit from Compass USA staff before being approved.
Reporter Krista J. Kapralos: 425-339-3422 or kkapralos@heraldnet.com.
How to help
To be a host family for a student from Chengdu through Compass USA, call Denice MacKenzie at 425-218-2988.
