International students were celebrated Monday evening as 'Honourary Morden Citizens.'

Members of the Morden community, host families, City Councillors, and Western School Division Board Trustees gathered at Morden Collegiate Institute for the ceremony.

Babby Penner, the WSD International Education Program Coordinator, went through a similar school program in Winnipeg in 2002, and says it's special to see kids go through an experience that she did many years ago.

"I came 16 years ago, and I went to Winnipeg as an international student," says Penner, who is originally from Brazil.

Penner says the program is an exciting opportunity for the kids who live here to share Canadian culture, as well as experience different cultures without travelling to another country.

"Our Canadian students have [done] such a great job of including them and welcoming them, so we are very proud of our Canadian students," she says.

Julie Geake gets to experience this first hand. Her and her family are taking part in the exchange program for the first time this year, and says becoming a host family was simple.

"I just contacted the home stay coordinator and she came and did a home visit. [She] chatted with us, answered any questions we had, checked out the house a little bit, and later brought us our papers."

Although it was a long car ride from Winnipeg to Morden, and hosting someone from another country can have many uncertainties, Geake would recommend it to anyone.

"It's just a great experience. Teaching somebody about your own culture, learning about their culture, and for us, showing our family [and] kids that we could open up our homes and love somebody else, and bring somebody in was just a huge benefit for us," Geake says.

Penner says her favourite part of the program is "the relationships that we can build with these students . . . with the parents back in Mexico, and the people that we meet through the program. I feel like through the program, we actually bring a community together."