AFS Seeking Host Families for Foreign Students

Each year more than 11,000 young people study abroad with American Field Service Intercultural Programs.

During World Wars I and II, young Americans volunteered as ambulance drivers in the American Field Service (AFS) evacuating the wounded and dying from battlefields. When they returned home, they founded a movement to promote understanding and peace through international exchange today known simply as AFS.

Here in the U.S. families are always needed to share their lives with high school students who are eager to learn about us. As families open their homes and their hearts, they open the doors for international understanding.

Every family has something to offer: two-parent households with small children, teenagers or no children; single parents; grandparents; families with adopted children; or foster children. When families share their lives and homes it forms bonds of friendship that last a lifetime.

Host families welcome their hosted son or daughter between August 10 to 12 and they agree to provide a bed and meals. Families are asked to love, guide, and support their hosted student as they would their own. Students come with their own spending money and secondary medical insurance. They are between 15 and 18 years of age.

For 58 years AFS has been matching families and students from all over the world. Each family and student is supported by a volunteer liaison and many families also have AFS “aunt and uncle” families as well.

Anyone interested in hosting an AFS student (or perhaps a son or daughter wants to go abroad), contact: Floyd Van Weelden, regional manager for Southern California, Arizona, and Hawaii, at 1-800-225-7450 or visit www.afs.org/usa.