Louis Werner, 16, is the first Rotary Youth Exchange program student to come to Oneonta since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Werner, of Frankfurt, Germany, has been a full-time student at Oneonta High School for the past five months and will be here until the end of the academic year.
Rotary International offers long-term and short-term programs for youth ages 15 to 19 years old. This is Werner’s second visit to the United States. On his first trip, he got to explore the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota for a month during the summer. He also visited Wisconsin.
Next, Werner applied to spend a year of high school in either Japan, the U.S. or Italy through the Rotary’s exchange program. Exchange students pay for their own airfare, travel insurance, passport and visas.
The Rotary Club of Oneonta has participated in the exchange program for more than 60 years, said Sarah Patterson, treasurer of the club, who oversees the exchange program locally.
The club provides Werner with a stipend of $100 per month, she said. The host families provide free housing, meals, a bed and a desk.
Werner arrived on Aug. 21. Joseph Ficano, of Oneonta, his Rotary Youth Exchange counselor, and Vera Sosnowski, of Milford, this region’s country contact for Germany, met him at Albany airport.
“I was a Rotary exchange student in Sicily coming from the Utica area,” Ficano said. He has hosted five exchange students over the years before becoming a counselor.
“We had a very robust youth exchange program for our district,” Patterson said. “Dick Breuninger taught German at the high school. He was a driving force in how active our club was.”
After Breuninger died suddenly during the COVID pandemic, finding families to host exchange students has become a challenge, Patterson said.
All Rotary exchange students live with host families. Werner has lived with Dan Buttermann — Oneonta’s new mayor — his wife, Ana Laura Gonzalez, and two of their three daughters, Layla and Nadia, for the past five months.
He will join a new host family soon. Rotating is part of the exchange experience.
Buttermann’s oldest daughter, Malena, also is a Rotary exchange student. She is living in Mexico for a year and attending high school there.
Rotary International is a global network of more than 1.4 million members. The Central New York Rotary, known as District 7180, is part of the global organization. It is made up of 111 clubs and more than 2,800 members according to its website.
There are 23 Rotary exchange students currently studying in Upstate New York. “Some are from Sweden, Japan, Taiwan, Italy and Switzerland,” Werner said.
A coordinator for CNY Rotary organized a trip to New York City in the fall. Werner and the other 22 exchange students visited the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building.
“Time is going by fast,” he said. After Thanksgiving, the Buttermanns drove to Washington, D.C. Werner got to see the White House, the Lincoln Memorial and several museums.
“I liked the space museum the most,” he said.
Werner and Ficano meet a couple of times a month and sometimes attend Rotary lunches together. “He came to my home for Christmas eve with the Buttermanns,” Ficano said. The role of counselor is to be a constant for the student as they move among different host families.”
Werner said he is not sure what career he wants to pursue. He still has three more years of study when he returns to Germany.
His father works for a bank and his mother is an architect. Werner has a younger brother and a younger sister at home. He gets to talk to them about once a week.
“What I miss the most are my friends,” he said. Werner has made new friends by joining the soccer team at Oneonta High School. Now that the season is over, he is part of the Soccer Club, which practices every Wednesday and Sunday.
Werner joined the high school ski club. He also attends St. Mary’s Church.
He takes a German language class at Oneonta High School taught by Elisa Happ. She’s an exchange student from Germany who also teaches German at SUNY Oneonta. “It is fun to speak German in class,” Werner said.
Werner speaks German, English and some Italian. Ficano speaks Italian with Werner whenever possible. “He wants to keep up the practice … Italian is his second foreign language in lyceum in Germany,” Ficano said.
Werner began studying English at a private school when he was 6 years old. Normally, German schools begin offering English in the third grade.
“I am here to improve my English and get to know new people,” he said.
The CNY Rotary is planning a trip to Washington, D.C., as well as a two-week trip to the West Coast before Werner heads back to Frankfurt this summer. He’ll get to see Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Francisco.