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Sooo, Time For Revange!
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| St_Andrew |
So, as some of you know i have had "some" problems with my exchange organisation here, and yestrudya we had the last orientation with them, and the person highest up in YFU here in Canada pissed everyone off big time. So since im finally going off program in about a week and really have nothing to worry about anymore, I started to planned some kind of revange, and i really want to bring down this organisation :D
An exchange student friend of mine, her mom is a lawyer, so she is checking into what we can do that way. But my other plan was to try to get some semi gossip newspaper to publish an article about how bad they are, and in that way make as few as possible go with them (they are VERY dependent on people going out from Canada, since they only get school placements when someone is going out, so no one out, no one in). So, I wrote a letter and was planning to send it to the Toronto Star, but i dont know any reporter at any newspaper around here, so if someone has any contact or knows about any reporter around here that would be interested to write about this, please tell me. Probably be a lot easier than just send it to the toronto star "tip" email adress.
Here is the email i wrote. Im probably going to add more names to it, but most ppl are going off program the 16th of july so they are still afraid of them and might not want to sign for that reason. and my grammar sucks too...
| quote: | Subject: Tips for an article about exchange organisations
Body:
Hi,
I am an exchange student from Sweden currently living in Ontario studying at high school. I choose to go to Canada to get to experience your culture and see as much as possible of your country. As a Swede I hadn't really heard a lot about Canada, but it seemed like a nice country to go to, and after some research I thought that Canada would be the best country to go to for me (out of all countries in the world).
My point with this email though is that the Canada we got to experience here, is probably not the Canada that Canada wants to be portrayed as when we go back to our home countries. The Canada we got to experience was a country were exchange students ended up in families that used them as labour at their farms, or as baby sitters wile working all day or something else. A Canada where we weren’t allowed to do anything except sitting at home. A Canada where we were taken away many rights a Canadian citizen has. A Canada where we were constantly told that we should accept this and that this was Canadian culture. A Canada where our exchange organisation decided what they thought was Canadian culture, and blamed everything on the students, and always put the host families as first priority, and not the students who were here to learn about the cultures of Canada.
Many of these stories would be told to our friends back home, who might not know better than that this is Canada. If this happened to a Canadian in Sweden I would be seriously concerned, they are misusing the culture and also making your country look bad to the rest of the world!
All that said, I think that most exchange students here had a great time, but I’m sure that the way we would have experienced Canada would be a lot better and your reputation in the rest of the world would be a lot better if you took care about your exchange students better. When I say you, I don’t mean the friendly Canadian people, but the organisation that are supposedly here to help us.
Anyway, I think that an article about this would perhaps make the Canadian people aware of how their country is being portrayed to the rest of the world, thanks to organisations like this, and also to help people to not support organisations like this in the future.
I hope to hear from you if you are interested or not!
Best Regards,
Erik Englund |
Ideas how to write that better, or if i should send it or not are welcome. Also other ideas of how to possibly make a good revange are welcome :D
Also i cant be thankful enough for how all you TOTAs have supported me this year :) |
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| Jayx1 |
| I think you should just sue them for all your money back plus an hourly wage for all the free labour they got. |
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| Fir3start3r |
I'm not sure I understand your letter?
Are you saying you were given responsibilities like every other Canadian kid and didn't like it?
Now of course if the household in question is blatantly abusing you with chores, then I can understand and take back the above...
That's the responsibility of the organization doing the exchange not doing their homework well enough (as you so noted in your letter).
Have you talked to other exchange students that have gone through this agency? What did they say? :conf: |
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| St_Andrew |
| quote: | Originally posted by Fir3start3r
I'm not sure I understand your letter?
Are you saying you were given responsibilities like every other Canadian kid and didn't like it? |
No, Im saying that we had to do a lot of stuff that canadian kids dont have to do (boring stuff), but werent allowed to do all the stuff the canadian kids are allowed to do (fun stuff).
Some students had to work like 2 hours (without any wage) a day on the farm, not even having time to keep up with school or themselves. And the organisation thought this was normal. Or another student had to be babysitter every night, cause her host parents were working, and when they were home, they were so mean to her so she was pretty much crying every day. She is home in south america now. The stories goes on...
| quote: | Now of course if the household in question is blatantly abusing you with chores, then I can understand and take back the above...
That's the responsibility of the organization doing the exchange not doing their homework well enough (as you so noted in your letter).
Have you talked to other exchange students that have gone through this agency? What did they say? :conf: |
Yes, i have. Almost everyone has the same opionion as me. Not all host parents are bad tho, but i dont know many (any?) that have something good to say about this organsation.
Anyway, i should be cleared in my email. |
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| Fir3start3r |
That sucks dood...sorry to hear that :sadgreen:
I can kinda relate.
I once was billeted out to the family for a weekend while in Vancouver and the mother was an alcoholic! :wtf:
To say the least, the arguements she used to get into with her son (my age at the time) were pretty bad.
Hopefully they'll investigate your incident and come up with a compromising solution.
Good luck! :nervous: |
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| Jem_hadar |
Glad to see you not talking this sitting down dude and doing something about it.
Best of luck with all that man! Serious, i hope you get your revenge and can aquire some sort of satisfaction.
-jem- |
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| St_Andrew |
| quote: | Originally posted by Jem_hadar
Glad to see you not talking this sitting down dude and doing something about it.
Best of luck with all that man! Serious, i hope you get your revenge and can aquire some sort of satisfaction.
-jem- |
yeah, would defently feel good if i could ruin something serious for them. :D
| quote: | Originally posted by Jayx1
I think you should just sue them for all your money back plus an hourly wage for all the free labour they got. |
i should, as i said, my exchange student friend has a mother thats a lawyer, she said she was gonna check into what we can do. Unfortunatly i think they probably took away all things like that in the contract that we signed when we signed up for this . So to give them some bad publicity could change something even tho they still have all the legal things on their side... anyway i gtg now... |
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| TrueToTheCrew |
Question,
Before entering into this program, did you not investigate or even ask for what to expect. I can understand if you signed up for a tour of Canada and had to work on a farm. If there is something in your contract that has been violated then maybe i can understand. It just so happens that your host family are a bunch of selfish idiots who could of at least showed you around or arranged some outings for you.
You must remember too that your host parents are liable for your safety.
It is also retarded that the program would actually send people to holes like stratford.
Buyer beware id think.
Anyways, sorry to hear about your experience and good luck with your efforts to screw them over. |
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| St_Andrew |
| quote: | Originally posted by TrueToTheCrew
Question,
Before entering into this program, did you not investigate or even ask for what to expect. I can understand if you signed up for a tour of Canada and had to work on a farm. If there is something in your contract that has been violated then maybe i can understand. It just so happens that your host family are a bunch of selfish idiots who could of at least showed you around or arranged some outings for you.
You must remember too that your host parents are liable for your safety.
It is also retarded that the program would actually send people to holes like stratford.
Buyer beware id think.
Anyways, sorry to hear about your experience and good luck with your efforts to screw them over. |
Yeah, I think thats the problem somewhere in that contract i signed there probably is something like "We have the right to deny you any rights to ensure your safty bla bla bla"... But thing is, when i signed up for this, and when they advertised for it, they didnt mention anything like this... i mean really, i thought it was obvious that you can do some things that they dont allow me to do. Also im 19 so something is seriously flawed. They did warn me that i would probably end up in a rural area tho, so i was prepared for that and it wasnt an issue (even tho i love the city!!!!)...
my plan with this was really to inform ppl about, if they find it normal sure go on going with them on an exchange, if not, then dont go with them. I find the later more likely for most ppl. |
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