Open your heart and home to an exchange student!

Thinking About Welcoming an Exchange Student? Now's the Time. Sharing daily life with a teenager from another country and culture is a rich and rewarding experience, and it's a wonderful way to bring more understanding into the world. If you've ever thought about welcoming an exchange student into your home and family, now's the time to learn more. AFS, the leading international high school student exchange program, is looking for families in Madison to host high school students for an academic year or semester.

Through the years a wide variety of students have traveled to America through AFS with interests that match your own such as some students are vegetarians or vegans. AFS tries to match host families with lifestyles similar to the students because eating meals together and exploring the community makes all the difference for a young visitor studying in the United States.

AFS was founded by volunteer ambulance drivers who survived World War I and II who believed, as AFS believes today, that the way to build a more just and peaceful world begins when people from different countries and cultures meet, learn more about each other, and begin to understand each other. Today AFS is also largely a volunteer effort, with more than 6,000 US volunteers and 100,000 worldwide. The mission of AFS is to work toward a more just and peaceful world by providing international and intercultural learning experiences to individuals, families, schools, and communities through a global volunteer partnership.

What does hosting require? Families are asked to provide a bed (students may share a room with a sibling of the same gender), daily meals, and the same love and support they would share with their own children. Host families come in all sizes: single parents, two parent families, younger couples with young children or no children of their own, families with adopted children, foster parents, and retired couples, for example. Local volunteers work with the students and families throughout the year to help with cultural adjustment. Students provide their own spending money and have their own medical insurance.

There's No Place Like Your Home. Each year, AFS welcomes more than 2,600 international high school students to the U.S. These are outstanding young people who were selected in their home countries to study in U.S. high schools and are eager to experience what it's like to live in America. Hosting a student for a year or semester is something you and your family can do to bring more understanding to the world at a time when the world really needs it.

AFS students come from more than 50 countries and represent many different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Local AFS Volunteers enroll students in high school and support students and their families to help both gain the most from their experience. In addition to host families, AFS needs people who are interested in becoming volunteer liaisons to work locally with families and their hosted students. Anyone interested in learning more about hosting or volunteering with AFS can contact us via the host family interest form, call Heather at 1-800-876-2377 ext. 2264, or email her at HMansk@afs.org.

AFS Intercultural Programs/USA is a nonprofit, 501(c)3 organization.

AFS Intercultural Programs
Central Region Office
2356 University Ave West, Suite #424
St. Paul, MN 55114
1-800-876-2377
www.afsusa.org/