Future Leaders Exchange (FLEX) is a scholarship student exchange program administered by the U.S. Department of State through funding from the Freedom Support Act. The program provides opportunities for high school students (ages 15-17) from former Soviet Union (including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Ukraine) to spend a year in the United States, living with a host family and attending an American high school.
The program was created in 1992 after former Senator Bill Bradley’s conviction "that the best way to ensure long-lasting peace and understanding between the U.S. and Eurasia is to enable young people to learn about democracy firsthand through experiencing it".[1] Since its inception in 1993, more than 18,000 high school students from 12 Eurasian countries (two more countries which used to participate in the program are Belarus and Uzbekistan) have studied in the U.S. under the program.[2]