Youth Exchange: A Guide for Club Counsellors and YEOs
Where you sit in the approval chain, your group mailbox, the wellbeing report, and the dashboard.
On this page
The approval chain, and where you sit
Every travel request goes through the same four approvers, in the same order, no matter the travel level:
flowchart TD S["Student submits"] --> HP["Host parents"] HP --> CC["Club Counsellor - you, if you are the counsellor"] CC --> Y["District YEO - you, if you are the YEO"] Y --> CH["YEP Chair"] CH -->|"Levels 1 and 2"| DONE["Approved"] CH -->|"Level 3, international"| DG["District Governor"] DG --> DONE
- Club Counsellors are asked second, after the host parents.
- District YEOs are asked third, after the Club Counsellor.
Level 1 is not shorter than Level 2 or Level 3. The only differences by level are the amount of notice required (14 days for Levels 1 and 2, 30 days for Level 3) and whether the District Governor also approves, which only happens on Level 3, international travel.
You are only emailed a link once it is genuinely your turn: the person before you in the chain must have already approved.
Your group mailbox address
Approval emails and other Youth Exchange system emails are sent to a group mailbox address in the form yeo.groupN@rotary9660.org.au (where N is your group number), rather than to your personal Rotary or club email address.
This is deliberate. Club Counsellor and YEO roles change hands, sometimes partway through a student's exchange. A personal address stops working the moment someone hands over the role, and any request sent to it in the meantime would go nowhere. A group mailbox address stays the same across a handover: whoever currently holds the role has access to it, and nothing needs to be reconfigured in the travel request system when a handover happens.
Each group mailbox is delegated to two people: that group's current YEO and the YEP Chair. Both can open it and send as it, and it appears in their Outlook automatically, with nothing to add themselves. When a YEO changes, what changes is who is delegated to the mailbox, never the address itself. A student, a club or a printed booklet can keep using the same yeo.groupN@rotary9660.org.au address for years without knowing or caring who currently reads it.
As at 29 July 2026, the four groups are held by: Group 1, Welington Sardinha. Group 2, Stuart Holle. Group 3, Aurora Reilly. Group 4, Vicki Kembery.
Changing who has access to a group mailbox is a district IT task, done in the Exchange admin centre, not something a YEO or counsellor can do themselves. If a handover is happening, ask the District IT Officer to update it.
Host parent email is not verified
The host parents' email address on a travel request is typed in by the student when they submit the form. The district does not check that this address is correct, or that it genuinely belongs to the current host parents.
Because the host parent email is not verified, your approval as Club Counsellor, coming right after theirs in the chain, is what catches a wrong or outdated address. If the host parents' details shown on a request do not look right to you, for example because the family has changed since the address was entered, stop and check with the student before approving.
Completing a wellbeing report
YEOs complete a monthly wellbeing check-in for each student in their care, using the same form for every student. Go to support.rotary9660.org.au/yeo-report.html. No sign-in is needed.
The form covers wellbeing scores, school and host family placement, social and cultural adjustment, program compliance, and any safeguarding concerns. Full instructions are on the YEO to Student Wellbeing Report guide.
The committee dashboard
There is a dashboard the YEP Committee uses to see every student's status in one place. It is a committee tool, not something Club Counsellors or YEOs are expected to use.
You do not need it, and most counsellors and YEOs will not have access to it. Everything you need to do arrives by email, at the point it is your turn to act: approving a travel request, or completing a wellbeing report. You never need to sign in to anything to do either.
If you think you need access to the dashboard, ask the YEP Chair.
What this does not do
- It does not verify the host parent email address on a travel request. That check depends on you.
- It does not skip you or notify anyone out of order. You are only asked once it is genuinely your turn.
- It does not replace direct contact with the student. The wellbeing report is a record of a check-in you have, not a substitute for having it.
- It does not promise a turnaround time for approvals further down or up the chain from you.