Rachel Andresen was an American social worker and founder of Youth For Understanding, a non-profit organization dedicated to international exchanges of high-school students.
19 Facts About Rachel Andresen
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Rachel Andresen was the daughter of Reverend Earl Rice, a Methodist minister, and Josephine Mills.
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Rachel Andresen's parents motivated their seven children to be highly focused and productive, particularly with education.
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Rachel Andresen was very lively in high school and had participated in sports, drama, and music; she was an accomplished pianist.
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Rachel Andresen graduated top of her class when she was sixteen years old.
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Rachel Andresen attended the Detroit Conservatory of Music and received a BFA in music.
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Rachel Andresen was left with three children to raise alone and not many people opted to spend money on piano lessons at that time.
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Rachel Andresen decided that the only way she could make it was by returning to school.
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Rachel Andresen then got a Bachelor's in Education from Wayne State University followed by an Master's in Social Work from the University of Michigan in 1943.
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Rachel Andresen began her work with the YWCA in Detroit and became the director of Camp Talahi.
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Rachel Andresen met her second husband, Arvid Rachel Andresen, a Danish landscape architect, who was on excursion and stayed at the hostel.
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Rachel Andresen was approached by the Ann Arbor Rotarians and the State Department to supervise an exchange student program in 1952 in order to help bridge the rift of post-war hatred.
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Rachel Andresen was apprehensive of how well the concept of American families taking in students of a former enemy would be received.
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Rachel Andresen managed to place all the students, many of whom barely had enough clothes to fit into one small suitcase.
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Rachel Andresen realized it was impossible to hate someone one actually knows and understands on a family and community level.
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The YFU program began at a very grassroots level, and evolved and snowballed into a giant organization in the 25 years Rachel Andresen was at the helm.
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Rachel Andresen championed volunteerism, local politics and empowerment programs but she relished having more time with her family and with her piano and her gardening.
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Rachel Andresen continued to travel extensively abroad and in the states.
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Rachel Andresen died on November 3,1988, in South Lyon, Michigan, aged 81.