Participation is mandatory for all
new GO students (2023-2024) and
current GO Students (2022-2023)
Date: Saturday, July 22-Friday, July 28
Location: Šaštín, Slovakia
Registration Link: https://docs.google.com/forms/
Important Information (Click on Link to Learn More): 2023 Summer Camp Poster
Questions: Ema - [email protected] or Majej - [email protected]
The GO Program is not organizing a 2023 GO Summer Trip this year. If you are interested in participating in the GO Summer Camp...
Please contact
Barbara Tota-Boryczka
[email protected]
or
Tom Kropidlowski
[email protected]
Thank You for your interest. Blessings!
Agnieszka Kuszaj, from Poland and Ema Gromová from Slovakia share their
American experiences including their appeal to families (married, retired, with children, no children, etc.) to host a GO student
2022
Noemi Riniková (2023-2024 GO Student), Dee Dzrod (Host Parent), and Allison Dzrod (Host Sibling) talk with KVSS Spirit Catholic Radio's Host/Moderator, Paula Bastian, about the Global Outreach program in Nebraska, its mission, vision, and role in the life of a young Catholic exchange student from Slovakia.
To learn more about Noemi's journey: https://spiritcatholicradio.com/program/witness-local-youth-program/
In October 2020, Pope Francis published an encyclical – Fratelli tutti: On Fraternity and Social Friendship (https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_ 20201003 enciclica-fratelli-tutti.html). Given our inability to actually be “social” during the pandemic, that title might seem oddly discordant with our lives. Very few of us have recently traveled much beyond our own streets or cities. But in the chapter entitled “A Heart Open to the Whole World,” the Pope writes of our need to engage with humanity beyond our own borders. “For a healthy relationship between love of ones’ native land and a sound sense of belonging to our larger human family,” Francis writes, “it is helpful to keep in mind that global society is not the sum total of different countries, but rather the communion that exists among them.”
Creating “communion” among different countries would perhaps, on its surface, appear to be the task of diplomats: popes and cardinals, presidents and prime ministers, chancellors and heads of state. But could an individual or a family in the midwestern United States possibly add to this “communion”? In fact, there is a way that you can contribute to the Pope Francis’ vision of a global society grounded in communal love.
The Global Outreach Exchange Program has been bringing Catholic students from central and eastern Europe to the Midwest since 1991. Based in the Diocese of Green Bay, but reaching beyond to other areas of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Nebraska, nearly 600 high school students (from Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Ukraine) have been welcomed by families in our parishes. Students have lived with single-parent households, retired couples, and families with both pre-school and school-age children. While the program took a hiatus year due to the pandemic, this year it has again welcomed young Europeans into our parish communities.
Opening your home to a student can have a tremendous impact on you and your family. Pope Francis writes that in “seeing ourselves from the perspective of another, of one who is different, we can better recognize our own unique features and those of our culture: its richness, its possibilities and its limitations.”
Our Catholic – our universal – faith has no geographic boundaries. Do you have a heart open to the whole world? As Francis observes in Fratelli tutti, “To see things in this way brings the joyful realization that no one people, culture or individual can achieve everything on its own: to attain fulfillment in life we need others.”
In a world that seems to be increasingly disconnected and discordant, we here in the midwestern US can make an intentional step toward Pope Francis’ “global society” and contribute to the communion of love that Jesus Christ calls us to. You could change a young person’s life, while discovering and tapping into your capacity to change the world.