Adventures in Friendship

Left to right (Mary Baughman, Lu Feifei "Lydia", Hu Lirong "May", Joe Baughman.) May 30th: standing on the dock at ODNR, foot of Hancock Street, Sandusky. The girls both attend school in Singapore and are working and living at Cedar Point.

Imagine if your child went around the world for a summer. Wouldn't you want someone to be there for them if the need arose and they needed a friend? In the summertime many foreign students come to the Erie County area to work. Most lack basic transportation, their friends are few, they're in a strange place and their American "experience" is usually limited to work. Some find themselves trying to retain up to 3 seasonal type jobs just to make ends meet. They can become lonely and discouraged - often returning home with a less than favorable image of what life is like in the United States. Many foreign students working in Erie County in the summertime never meet Americans outside of their workplace. Typically they never get the opportunity to enter an American home or experience general hospitality. Sometimes their pay is stolen. Many students are unfamiliar with how banks, stores, and local law enforcement work. Sometimes they experience small problems which would otherwise be no problem for Americans familiar with the area.

This is one of the many programs the Kiwanis Club of Sandusky sponsors. If you want to participate in the Adventures in Friendship program an application is available on our site. Please visit our main site for more information. http://www.sanduskykiwanis.org/.