The story of how Kristína Makóová came to Cotter is a bit different compared to how most of the international students come to Cotter; she is part of an exchange program called “Global Outreach.”

The Global Outreach (GO) is a program for students from the Central and Eastern parts of Europe to come to study in the United States and stay with a host family. They are expected to become a true part of the family in every sense.

GO started for 1989 school year to bring seven international students to St. Mary’s Central High School in Menasha, Wisconsin. These first seven students were from Japan, Latin America and Switzerland.

With the fall of communism in the spring of 1991, GO saw a great opportunity to expose students from the former communist states to the western world. They offered a high quality, safe, one year Catholic high school experience for these students. It was at this time as well that GO moved from being exclusively at St. Mary’s Central to teaming up with of other Catholic schools around the mid-west. They hoped that the experience would offer a new culture for American student to get a taste of as well as give people back home a taste of America when they returned.

The first students to come from former communist countries were from the then still Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1991. Czechoslovakia did not break into the Czech Republic and Slovakia until 1993.

In the 11/12 school year, GO sent their first student to Cotter; this was Mate Kiss.

Kiss then chose Petra Hrubá. “ I didn’t choose anything, they [GO] wrote me that you’re going to live with this family, attend this place,” Hrubá said.

After arriving in America, Hrubá spent two days in Green Bay with a host family before coming to Winona and her new host family for the year. Her host family was crazy and very different from her. But even though she would argue with them every once in a while, she was very happy to have then.

“It wasn’t coincidence, like it surely meant to be,” Hrubá said. “Without them, I would not have been able to come here.”

Makóová found out about GO through a friend of hers who was looking for a year abroad program. Her friend Patricia and she thought it sounded like fun. Many other people from her school had come to America through GO, so it was a program that her parents knew and trusted.

“I’m not going to lie,” Makóová said. “It was also very affordable.”

She is staying with the Johnsons this year. They have sent all of their children through the Cotter system and are very familiar with the school.

“It has been a very fun experience for me, but that’s not to say that there haven’t been challenges. It is hard to come into a small school where everyone knows each other and you don’t know anyone, and sometimes these people are so strange to me. But I really feel like I have been accepted at Cotter.

“I do not know exactly, what led Mate or Petra to join the GO community, but many of us, exchange students have one thing in common; we are looking for something. Some might look for happiness, some for freedom, improvement of language or we just want to find how to live our lives.

“It is never as easy as we expect,” Makóová said. “But all of us wish that the first thought coming to our mind when we oversaw the name of the organization came to be true.”