How did being a YFU exchange student help define who you are today?

Mons Romulo(The Philippine Star)

January 18, 2015 - 12:00am

Tunting Cruz-Matters, lawyer My YFU year was time spent being brave, of being open to new things, of making mistakes and learning from it. Essentially, I learned the importance of courage and joy, and all these, at once, at age 16. My life since has been one big YFU adventure. YFU certainly prepared me to become what I am today — a mother, a wife, a lawyer/crusader with an exciting quasi-nomadic lifestyle. For this, I am deeply, profoundly, eternally grateful to my mother, Lourdes Lontok Cruz, and my aunt, Remedios Lontok Celi, YFU’s founding partners, who both saw to it that I would be fully equipped with life’s many, wonderful surprises. I share this experience with my brother, Angel L. Cruz and my sisters, Timmy L. Cruz and Sj Cruz-Molina, who are all YFUers.

What we are today can be attributed to the education and experiences we have gone through early on in life. They say traveling is the only thing we spend on that makes us richer — more so being away from home at a young age, living with a foster family for months, and being in a completely new environment.

This is exactly what the students that join the Youth for Understanding or YFU does. It is one of the world’s largest and most respected international educational exchange organizations that offers students the opportunity to study a year, semester or summer in a foreign country.

Let’s read as some personalities share how YFU has helped define who they are today.

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