Thank you Rotary Club of Belleville

Dakota Mahar is a Rotary Club Youth Exchange Student who spent a year in Germany in 2011/12.  Dakota joined the Rotary lunch meeting today to thank the Club for such a wonderful opportunity.  Dakota's thank you letter read as follows:  "It has been almost five years since I participated and began my journey with the Rotary Club of Belleville.  I was lucky enough to get my first pick and have the privilege to spend one year in the wonderful country of Germany.  My motivation was pure curiosity and wanting to experience a new culture and have an adventure.  I feel that this experience motivated me to study business since one of my host families were involved in the business world.  I am now a fourth year Finance student at the University of Alberta.  I also found that this experience sparked my interest in languages as I immediately continued to study the German language as well as starting to study Spanish upon entering university.  Cultural awareness and the ability to work with people on a global level is an increasingly important trait to have in this day and age, and I feel that the Rotary Club of Belleville helped me understand myself better and helped me determine what I wanted to do moving forward career wise.

 

I am having a moment of reflection as I just returned from studying abroad in Columbia and now have a high degree of cultural knowledge of both European and Latin American ways of life.  I want to thank the Rotary Club of Belleville for the opportunity that I was given as a 17 year old high school student who had no idea what the future had in store.  I really hope that this program continues to operate and gives students the opportunity of a lifetime like it did to me.

 

If there is anything I can do for the Club, I would be more than happy to.  Thank you and all the best".