 |
AFS
Host an Exchange Student
Connect with AFS
We are ranked as a top-rated charity by Charity Navigator, America’s largest independent evaluator of charities.
AFS Highlights
-
Become a Host Family
Now’s The Time to Welcome an Exchange Student!
Sharing daily life with a teenager from another country and culture is a rich and rewarding exp…
-
The Joy of Hosting Exchange Students
I’ll never forget our Italian AFS exchange student’s great big smile when we first met at Arrival Camp two summers ago. We had communicated via ema…
-
8 Great Reasons to Study Abroad, Spring Departures 2009
1. Your New Year’s resolution for 2009 can be to start the New Year in a new country.
2. Start school at the same time as your new class…
AFS Students Experience Cultural Immersion
Index-Tribune article by Sandi Hansen
Each year, Sonoma Valley hosts several American Field Service exchange students from any of 40 countries participating in the year-long, intercultural learning-experience program. And it’s hard to tell who benefits most, the students or the host families who open their homes and hearts to those who, at first are strangers.
Eighteen-year-old Benjamin (Ben) Brett, of Germany; 17-year-old Khairurrijal (RJ) Adhar, from Indonesia; and 16-year-old Sirush Khalatyan, of Armenia, are strangers no more to their “second families” or to the many students, teachers and other friends they’ve made in nearly a year since they arrived in America for the first time last August. Sonoman Jean McQuady, long an AFS program coordinator, has the task of finding host families for the students whose English can range from very good to just beyond basics and hand signals. None of this year’s three students had trouble communicating with others as they each spoke fluent English….Click to read more.