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There are five overarching considerations when planning an exchange program – travel, time commitment, food and housing, program engagement, and designating a liaison
Travel
Who and How Many?
When considering who to send, remember that these individuals need to be open to new ideas and be able to fully report back on any opportunities that may arise. Likewise, they need to be persons with institutional authority and/or legitimacy in your own organization so that all program stakeholders will consider their ideas and reports with the appropriate weight.
Deciding how many people to send has two angles. First, the more people sent, the higher the cost to whomever is covering expenses, be it the programs or the individuals. Second, you need to send an appropriate number of people so that multiple aspects of a program can be examined, forming a more well-rounded picture, while not also overwhelming the host program with guests.
Distance and type of travel
Considerations about distance and type of travel go hand-in-hand. If multiple staff members are traveling together, carpooling have help lower the per-person cost. The further away from your own program you are traveling, the more cost-effective it is to consider flight. However, this can potentially limit your movement while at the host site, forcing you to rely on your hosts for on-site/local transportation or incurring further costs such as vehicle rental.
Time commitment
An effective program exchange will necessitate individuals involved participating in at least pieces of two programs – your own and the program with which you are exchanging. Exchanging staff with a program that meets at the same time as your own does not make sense as it prohibits a true program comparison. Adapting to this reality means considering individuals who have the flexibility to take multiple weeks off work, who may be free during certain points in the years (such as teachers or full-time college students), or other creative options such as sending a representative who may live near enough the host program to commute in for evening activities. Other options involve only viewing certain portions or days of the host program such as registration or staff/counselor training.
Based on the timing of the two programs, as well as the individuals involved, the time commitment may also involve balancing planning during the the lead-up to your own program or conducting post-program assessment of your own program while visiting another.
Food and Housing
Considerations for feeding and housing visiting staff involve not just when they eat or where they stay but at what/whose cost. Not every host program can absorb the cost of visitors themselves. This being said, it is in the best interest of a true exchange that visiting staff members eat and are lodged in the same manner as those of the host program. This allows for a truer program experience.
Program Engagement
The best form an exchange can take involves true engagement with the program by the visiting staff members, not merely an observational role. This can include hands-on involvement in a variety of settings including registration, counselor training, academics, running elections, athletics supervision, etc. Engagement that takes this form of interaction will allow visiting staff members to truly understand the complexities of the host program’s processes for themselves, modeling in many ways Boys State’s learning model for participants.
Included in this engagement should be an interaction with staff and counselors at both the front-end and back-end settings of the program. Engagement should not be limited to just one department or subset of the program, even if the primary goal of the exchange is to observe a specific program component. Fully integrating within the host program exposes the visiting staff to a variety of information for many different sources and angles. This not only allows the visitors to potentially develop ideas not previously considered but to also provide feedback to the host program on different components.
Designating a Liaison
Any host program should designate a specific individual to serve as the on-site liaison for visiting staff members. This should be a central person who can help guide visitors but that does not necessarily have to be with them 24/7. The person in this role needs to be of sufficient enough experience and rank within the host program to effectively answer questions any questions the visitors may have or to point to the people who can answers those questions.
