Rachel Andresen

Meeting her self-imposed challenge happened three years later in 1951. As part of an effort to spread democratic values, the U.S. Government offered a year of academic study in the United States to high school students from Germany and Austria. The selected students were to live with volunteer host families and attend public high schools. Private organizations partnered with the Federal Government to find host families and support students and families throughout the experience. Seventy-five German students were accepted by the Rotary Club in southeastern Michigan, where Rachel, who had a master’s degree in Social Work and led interdenominational church youth activities, volunteered to find host families and counsel students and families on adjustment issues. The Rotarians, however, soon dropped the program because of coordination problems. Rachel saw each of these students as a “new light” of hope in war-torn Europe and was determined to see the program through. She persuaded the Michigan Council of Churches to partner with the U.S. Government and dedicated her free time to running the program.

Rachel’s charisma and power of persuasion served her well as she successfully recruited an ever-increasing numbers of volunteer host families through her personal networks and church contacts. Within a couple of years, the hosting program covered the State of Michigan, and by the late fifties, it had expanded into Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. The number of American families willing to welcome foreign students into their homes was growing. Some of Rachel’s original families from 1951, in fact, continued hosting for up to 25 years!

As the program spread geographically, student numbers quickly passed the 200, 300 and 500 marks. This was great progress toward Rachel’s vision of world peace, but it also was more than one dedicated volunteer could do in her spare time. And thus, a volunteer network was needed to help support students and host families. Rachel found this support most commonly in former host parents who were eager to deepen their involvement in the great cause. The YFU program continued to spread throughout the United States, first via people from Michigan who moved elsewhere and created new YFU volunteer networks in their new locations. Rachel’s vision turned out to be persuasive everywhere: Youth is our future; students of 16 or 17 years are young enough to become totally immersed in another culture and way of life, but old enough to understand what the experience of total immersion means, to draw conclusions from it and turn them into life choices - for peace, for understanding, for cooperation and for building bridges between cultures. Rachel saw this as a natural outflow of homestay experiences - such choices required no indoctrination; in fact, these students would be quite immune to indoctrination and ideology, for they had experienced difference and lived it.

Rachel Andresen was an extraordinarily charismatic leader of volunteers, first in Michigan, where she was born and raised, then throughout the United States, and soon around the world. She saw Youth For Understanding as an opportunity to not only ensure the lights would remain on, but also as a way for it to spread across the globe. Her hard work and commitment were recognized in 1964 when YFU gained the status as a non-profit educational organization and then again in 1973 when she became a Nobel Peace Prize nominee for her commitment to international youth exchange.

Youth For Understanding is a dream come true. It is as strong as steel, as delicate as the moonbeam, as fragile as a butterfly wing, and as illusive as a will-of-the-wisp. It’s built on faith, on hope for the future and love as deep as abiding as life itself.

To be part of it brings out the best in all of us. Each of us who has shared the magic of its being has contributed something bigger than we are. We have learned to love and be loved, to trust and be trusted, to open our homes and our hearts to all people, everywhere.

Youth For Understanding has been like my own baby. I came to an early realization that here was a people-oriented program with an identity of its own, with tremendous possibilities for developing understanding with an ultimate goal of world peace, given to me to guide and direct through its formative years.

Why me? I will never know. I do know that I was given strength, courage and leadership to create and develop Youth For Understanding. I did not do it alone. There are people by the thousand who have given of themselves to make this dream come true. It became their dream, too.

I want to say “thank you” to Students, to Host Families, to our School Principals, Superintendents, School Counselors and Teachers, to Community Leaders, to Churches for their undergirding of the Program and the network of Staff and Volunteers throughout the world. My own private purpose has been to get the job done and to see that everyone involved grew in the process.

Thank you again.
I love you.
-Rachel Andresen