PAX - Program of Academic Exchange is a program of PAX Laurasian Exchange and is designated by the U.S. Department of State as a J-1 Visa Exchange Visitor Program sponsor.

Roman meets the mayor!

I am always interested in getting to know people who have achieved a lot in their lives, because it inspires me to change something in my life and work more on my future to become a better version of myself. In addition, I am always interested in people from local or federal governments, because those people have put in a lot of effort to contribute to their community or even country.

When I arrived in the United States, I wanted to talk more about my home country Ukraine. I decided to start by signing up for a meeting with the mayor of Appleton. By the way, Appleton is my host city and I really adore it!

My meeting with Mayor Woodford was scheduled for October 25th. I was a little bit nervous, because I don’t have the opportunity to meet the authorities of big communities every day. However, I had an exact plan of what I wanted to talk about, and I knew what I wanted to get from our meeting. 

I invited the mayor to one of my International Education Week presentations.

The meeting didn’t last too long, but we discussed a lot of topics and the meeting was really productive! The main topic was Ukraine. I leaped at the chance to talk more about my country, my personal experience, and the current situation.

I have also already scheduled more than 10 International Education Week presentations at school, and I invited the mayor to one of them! We talked about organizing an event about Ukraine in Appleton. Maybe, I will do a presentation about Ukraine for the whole community. 

I was also very excited to be invited to a future online meeting with the Appleton leadership team to talk about Ukraine.

To conclude, it was an amazing experience and I am sure I will do more and more to raise awareness of Ukraine in my host community. 

—Roman (FLEX, Ukraine), hosted by the O’Connell family (WI)