Youth for Understanding
From Free net encyclopedia
Youth for Understanding (YFU, full name: "Youth for Understanding International Exchange") is a non-profit organisation which organizes high school and other exchanges between countries all over the world, especially between the United States, Canada, Brazil, Sweden, Australia, Germany, Russia, Finland, and Japan. Its goal is to enhance an understanding of the host country's culture as well as giving the host family a glance at the exchange student's culture, thus promoting tolerance and peaceful global cooperation. Youth for Understanding was established in 1951 in the Detroit area, in Michigan, and moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1956. In its early years, the agency brought students from post-war Germany to live in the United States to experience the USA, and by 1955, the agency sent high school students from the USA on ten-week trips to Germany. The first trips across the Pacific and to Mexico were established in 1958, and South America in 1959. YFU, Inc., the non-profit educational organization, was established in 1964, and the agency's offices were moved to Washington, D.C. in 1978.
By the end of the 1990s, a financial crisis forced YFU, Inc. into bankruptcy. The agency's offices were moved to Bethesda, Maryland, and the agency was rechartered as YFU USA, with tremendous assistance from the bureau in Germany. Until that time, YFU had been the primary administrative organization for the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange scholarship program, but was entirely removed from the program due to the reorganization. This also forced a reorganization of the scholarship program, now administered regionally under the umbrella of CDS International.
