Youth Exchange Program Scrambles to Find Homes

A group of French teen-agers planning to visit San Diego this month might not make the trip because a disagreement has left them without enough host families.

World Exchange, a nonprofit youth exchange organization based near New York City, is scrambling to find host families in the San Diego area for 10 boys, ages 14 to 19, by Thursday evening, said Michael Sklaar, the organization’s president.

In the past week, 12 families have volunteered to take in 11 teen-agers and their 28-year-old supervisor. The remaining 10 boys in the group, however, will be left behind if another 10 families are not found immediately, Sklaar said.

“It’s a shame. It’s not their fault, but more than half of these kids will not get another chance to visit the United States,” he said. “They’ve all been told we’re having some trouble finding host families, but we think we can just make it in time.”

The youths are scheduled to be in San Diego from July 6 to Aug. 5.

The disagreement is between World Exchange and an El Cajon couple, Larry and Helen Vaughn, who served as the group’s program directors for San Diego until they were fired June 21.

Ruth Fitzsimmons, World Exchange’s West Coast director, said the Vaughns were fired for failing to recruit host families within a reasonable time and for providing the names of eight families who, when contacted by World Exchange, said no one had asked them to be host families and that they were not interested in participating in the program.

“This has never happened to us” since World Exchange was founded in 1986, Fitzsimmons said. “It’s disheartening, especially for the kids.”

Larry Vaughn disputed the allegations, saying World Exchange panicked and fired him and his wife for no reason. He said the eight host families in question agreed last month to take teen-agers into their homes. He would not release the families’ names.

Vaughn also said he was ahead of last year’s recruiting pace, when he and his wife secured 27 host families for a cooperative cultural exchange program between World Exchange and a similar group.

World Exchange said the Vaughns received high marks for their recruiting performance last year. The Vaughns also were a host family for World Exchange in 1988 when they lived in Pennsylvania.

“They (World Exchange) were rather nasty on the phone,” Vaughn said. “We were bewildered by their exasperation. We ran a successful program last year, and we were confident we could find enough families again.”

Host families, who are matched with students with similar interests, are supposed to be signed up at least several weeks in advance in order to complete the necessary paper work and allow the students and families to exchange letters, Sklaar said.

The Vaughns had not yet been paid for their recruiting efforts. Program directors receive $125 per student--half after the student arrives and half after their departure home--for their part in finding host families, offering support and arranging cultural activities during the teens’ stay in the United States, Sklaar said.

The French youths, who come from various socioeconomic backgrounds, paid up to $1,500 to World Exchange, and any who are left behind will receive full refunds, Sklaar said.

Host families receive no stipend for taking in a foreign student and usually spend at least several hundred dollars per student during the stay, Sklaar said.