Afs-Usa Inc

I was an AFS myself many many years ago and I loved the experience. I promised that one day I was going to host students to pay back what someone did for me. When I became an adult and got married and three kids, my wife agreed that we could host. We hosted 4 AFS students and had a great experience with three of them. The irst one was from Italy and he was a great boyl the second one was from Germany and he was a bad kid who I don't know how he was chosen to be an exchange student, he drank a whole bottle of vodka and was sent back home. AFS handled this situation terribly which I won't go in detial. The third boy was from Turkey and he was a nice kid too, the fourth one was from Germany and he was the best, super nice. After those four boys, AFS continued pestering us to host more and we decide to host a kid from Norway and AFS asked us if we could host two kids at the same time. Since are own kids were grown, we had plenty of space and agreed to add a kid from Germany. That's when the nightmare started. The German boy jealous of the other boy from Norway, and because he didn't like me because of my hispanic background came up with a horrible lie saying that he felt uncomfortable around me. He wanted to leave and he got it but AFS removed both from the house and believe the lies rather than investigate and resolve the issue without conflicts. The Norwegian boy was very angry because he had to leave too. The situation escalated very bad as the boy made up horrible stories that had to be proved in court. AFS was never on our side and they were "protecting the AFS student, which I understand except that left us alone with no support and that's when I realized that AFS uses the families to make money as they charge the kids Money for the exchange but we as host families provide everything for the kids. They used us for many years and I do not have any respect for AFS anymore. I would not recommend any family to host with this organization. Last year we hosted a kid from Australia and the organization is called International Student Exchange (ISE) and we had a great experience again. They are not money makers as AFS is. So I would recommend them over AFS.

DO NOT PARTICIPATE -- My family just experienced the exact situation described in several reviews below. We hosted a French female student in California, she was a sophomore in our local high school. She was with us for 7 months, during which we thought everything was going well. We took her to the Grand National Rodeo, ski trip in Tahoe (we provided all equipment,ski pass, etc.), box seats at the San Francisco Ballet Nutcracker performance, great seats for the national touring show of Moulin Rouge, Renaissance Faire (loaned her the costume), Halloween party and associated events (loaned her a beautiful flapper outfit), etc. And this past Saturday AFS arrived and moved her to another family: zero advance notification, just poof & she's gone. Frankly, it reminded me of a scene in a movie when Child Protective Services removes kids from a dangerous abusive situation. We do not know anything and were provided zero information. I gather the girl somehow arranged to get another family to host her that has a kid on the same lacrosse team and our exchange student thought she would have more fun in that family. The situation has been stressful, hurtful, and extremely unprofessional. At no time did anyone from AFS comply with their stated process of communicating with both parties (student & host family), try to mediate a mutually agreeable solution, work in a transparent and respectful manner. Instead the student was told to lie to us. Explicitly and verbatim: she was coached to lie to us and hide everything about what was happening re: this transfer that the student unilaterally initiated. I do not know what she said to AFS to cause them to behave this way but the reality that this precise experience is articulated several times below makes me believe this is how the organization operates. We are shocked and upset; especially since our family had previously had extremely positive experiences with foreign exchange for our son and a family in Japan via Rotary. My advice: find another agency and do not get involved with this group in any way!

AFS delivers life-changing experiences to participants and families - not only deep cross-cultural experience but new friends and the challenges and discomfort that promote growth.

Sending and hosting adolescents across borders is a profoundly human enterprise: great highs of insight and life-long relationships, lows of communication failures, incompatibilities, and complicated families and kids.

Participants' most common summary of their AFS experience is "LIFE CHANGING" - which doesn't arise out of convenience or satisfying the initial expectations of a 16 year old, but rather out of overcoming the challenges of learning a new language, dealing with conflict, adjusting to a very different world that the one you left behind. AFS is not there to offer a happy tourist experience but rather a chance to grow.

The kids and families who understand that the AFS experience will bring challenge and complexity as well as joy and new insights have the best time. I was blessed with a wonderful host family in Chile and three interesting and challenging AFS "daughters" and have seen the best and worst of volunteers. I saw my son grow in his AFS experience - especially through the hard moments.

I volunteer with and give to AFS not because it is perfect but because AFS people - volunteers, donors, hosting and sending families, school staff, and the kids - are so wonderful with all their challenges and because the program continues to deliver life-changing experience and deep cross-cultural experience.

Terrible experience. If you are considering this type of program, go with a different organization. Volunteers generally have no idea what they are doing, AFS staff are completely unresponsive if you have a problem, and forget it if you find that your child needs a host family change - they will never agree to undertake the task, and finding a new one in the same area is next to impossible, so your kid will be miserable. Also, expect that they will ignore the wishes of you, as parents - once you send your child on the program, it's like you've all joined a cult. And if you think you've got a great kid and you won't have problems, you may find yourself surprised - AFS will make you think your child is the problem when, in fact, the organization itself is the real problem. Couldn't possibly be less satisfied.

We hosted a student in the Kansas City area in 2021. Our experience was not good. We filled out our host family application and we got approved to host a student. After we were approved something happened in our family and we needed to let AFS know about, but when we tried to log in to our AFS application we couldn't access it anymore. So we contacted our area liaison about the issue she told us it would be fine and not to worry about it. We even spoke with another AFS staff member about the issue after our student arrived. Five months later with very little warning they came and took our student from us. Our student didn't want to go but they took her anyway. The next day we spoke with someone and they knew nothing about our family issue. The ball was dropped by local AFS staff causing and family and a host student to be hurt. AFS offers little support and needs to work on there communication with their host families.

I went to Thailand through AFS from 2009-10 and it was a life changing experience. My host family to this day calls me their daughter, keeps in contact with me, and even sends me cards every once in a while. I honestly could not have asked for a better experience. What someone else said is true, it is a volunteer organization. But because it's volunteered based usually the people that are involved are there because they want to be. Some students did have a bad experience, and I myself didn't get along with all of the people and teachers that I met. But I met people from all different kinds of program (YFU, Rotary, etc) and there were always a couple students that had a rough time. I found that many of the students that had issues didn't talk to the AFS office about it. The students that did changed host families and had amazing experiences. Since it is a volunteer organization there are some hiccups along the way (miscommunication about train arrival times was my biggest one) but the volunteers I met were genuine about taking care of the students. I honestly hope my nephews can get the chance to go when they're in high school.

My AFS exchange after high school was a life-changing experience that greatly broadened my perspective and contributed to my study and career choices later in life. For this reason I do donate to AFS. The application and interview process was thorough and they seemed intent on only sending kids abroad who were prepared for the experience. Thinking back on the kids who were on my trip, they were all very capable, psychologically robust people. I was sent information about my prospective family and about the country I was to visit before the trip. AFS was able to make a last-minute switch for me when it turned out that I couldn't go on a trip that was leaving on the day I was taking a test that couldn't be rescheduled. They also provided follow-up experiences. While my experience was good, on the way back I did learn that a number of my fellow exchangees had not had good experiences. Several of the females and one male had been used primarily as babysitters and househelp. Some complained that they were not taken out and given experience with other local youths and were denied trips around the area. I hope AFS has done more to improve education and recompense of host families so that this sort of thing will not occur.

This program's quality is limited to the quality of the volunteers. If the volunteers are great, the experience is great. If the volunteers are not--the experience can be a horrible experience for your child. Paid staff will not honestly evaluate a complaint or acknowledge any kind of a problem with the program in any way--even if their is complete and absolute proof.