It used to be a very Europe-dominated programme, but it’s very diverse now

The PIE: Do you ever get to know the people who come over to the US on these programmes?

RL: My blog, Route J-1, is all about that! I’ve met such amazing people. I met this fascinating young girl from Romania who came from a very poor family and she got herself onto the programme three times, which cost a lot of money, but her English was fantastic and she had such a positive attitude. Tragedy had happened in her family the year before, but she stayed and the people at Grand Canyon, where she was placed, became family to her.

All these students have so much to offer the world and they’ve got a lot of guts and self-initiative and drive. I have respect for all of them coming over, they’re such high quality students.

The PIE: Where does the US stand on the global scale with regards to its exchange programmes?

We would love to have more funding from Congress, but we have this J-1 Visa Program that no one else has. I think that we have quite a number of opportunities. I’m impressed by the money that Brazil is putting into outbound exchanges and I would love to see more reciprocity in our own programmes.

We are opening up a study abroad office in our Bureau, because it’s a major goal of ours to get American students studying abroad and it’s tough for a number of reasons.

The PIE: What trends can you foresee?

RL: We talk a lot about skills building and entrepreneurship and the internship side. We’re all about internships now. And we talk about 100,000 Strong in the Americas. Internships for credit is the name of the game, and it’s an area where we really would like to see more growth and more partnerships between universities and sponsors to create programmes where students will be getting credit. Youth, skills, entrepreneurship, these are priority areas for us now.