On the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals and the Usefulness of Acronyms

Hello!

 I'll be using this blog to track my journey throughout my time in the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals, and I hope you find it interesting/useful/educational/fun to look at.

 I suppose I should first give a general overview of what exactly the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange (affectionately referred to as CBYX) is. The official CBYX webpage says:

"The Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals (CBYX) is a fellowship funded by the German Bundestag and U.S. Department of State, that annually provides 75 American and 75 German young professionals, between the ages of 18-24, the opportunity to spend one year in each other’s countries, studying, interning, and living with hosts on a cultural immersion program."

http://culturalvistas.org/programs/abroad/congress-bundestag-youth-exchange-young-professionals/

Neat, right? The program promotes citizen diplomacy, cultural exchange, and professional ties between Germany and the United States by exchanging 75 young professionals from both countries for a year. The participants come from a wide range of professional fields; there is no requirement for what you must study to be in the program, only that you be studying/developing skills in something. Likewise, participants come from all different regions/states across both countries. From here on out, I'll be focusing on the American side of things--mostly because that's all I know. 
The program is funded in part by the Department of State, but is administered in the U.S. by Cultural Vistas. In Germany, CBYX is administered by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, or GIZ. To add to the confusion, in Germany, the program is called the Parlamentarisches Patenschafts-Programm für Junge Berüfstätige und Auszubildene, or PPP. 
The program has three phases, and they are as follows:
2 Months: Intensive language schooling
~4 Months: Study at a German university
5 Months: Internship at a German Organization
For the first phase, participants are generally placed in dorms, or Studentenwohnheime. For the next two phases, participants are moved to their "permanent placement" location and live with a host family. If there is no host family available, they might live once again in a  Studentenwohnheim or in a Wohngemeinschaft (WG), a shared apartment. 
There are 4 seminars participants must attend for the program year: the orientation seminar in Washington, D.C., a midyear seminar in Frankfurt, end-of-year seminar in Berlin, and the final concluding seminar in New York. 
The most incredible part of the program is that it is a fully funded fellowship. It covers round-trip international airfare, tuition costs, housing, some food, and program-related travel within Germany. Of course, participants do have to front some costs, but it is nothing compared to what the cost of this experience would be without the funding from the program itself. 
I hope that this overview was enlightening, and I'll be going into detail about the program more in between posts about my personal experience within the program and all the cool stuff I'm lucky enough to get to do. Thanks for reading :)
Tschüss!
Maggie

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