Latest Program Reviews

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!