The Longmont Rotary Club will be hosting a delegation from Serbia this fall.
The delegation is part of the Open World Program, created by Congress in 1999 as an exchange program for countries of the post-Soviet era. The Longmont Rotary Club has been an active participant in the program since it was established, Rotary member Richard Lyons explained during the club’s meeting on Tuesday.
Longmont Rotary has hosted 18 delegations from places around the world, including most recently Ukraine before the pandemic. The delegations apply with a topic they are interested in learning more about in the country, such as business development, education, hospice and nonprofit development.
Lyons highlighted an especially successful delegation the Longmont Rotary hosted from Moscow that learned about burn treatment in Greeley.
The delegation will include five members who will be visiting in October for a week. They specified in their application their interest in learning about civics, technology in the classroom and innovation, specifically as a way to retain college-educated professionals in Serbia who often move out of the country to somewhere more desirable.
Lyons said that, seeing what the group was interested in, he immediately reached out to the St. Vrain Valley School District and their Innovation Center as an ideal place for the delegates to tour.
The day-to-day curriculum for the delegates is still being developed, but will include tours of the Innovation Center and other local schools, along with a likely stop by the Colorado Department of Education and local college’s schools of education.
Longmont Rotarians will host the delegates at their homes.
