The International Farm Youth Exchange Program recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. USDA and IFYE (iffy) will work together to promote cultural understanding between the U.S. and overseas countries. The MOU commends IFYE for its past and continuing contribution to international cultural understanding of rural areas across the world. Victoria Warren is President of IFYE. She says the MOU also means the USDA and her group will work together to continue the IFYE mission into the future.
The IFYE program sends young adults 19 and over to farms and rural areas in other countries and helps them learn to understand different cultures and ways of doing things. Warren says the experience isn’t just for young adults in rural America either.
Program participants should be interested in things like agriculture, foods, nutrition, or family consumer science to get the best possible program experience. Warren talks about what the participants will do when they’re overseas with exchange families.
Warren says IFYE isn’t like other exchange programs because participants aren’t there to go to school. However, that doesn’t mean the young adults don’t learn anything.
Warren participated in the program too. She made an overseas trip back in the late-1970s.
For more information about the program, go to www.ifyeusa.org.