I am writing without a location or specifying the year when I joined the program because I do not want to get into trouble with my local AFS a second time (as you will see later on). This is going to be quite a long review.
I joined the program as a student and was supposed to have a one-year long exchange, but due to AFS laziness, trickery, and greed I was sent back to my home country in a just a couple months.
I went on exchange in an European country, and was sent to a remote chapter with no other AFS students. This, of course, means the family (not families!) willing to host you are very limited.
My host and I communicated with each other extensively prior to arrival, but as you may know from other reviews, this really doesn't mean anything as neither party knows who they will really be living with.
AFS builds up VERY unrealistic expectations for students (and for host families as well from what I've read in other reviews here). Students DO expect to live with a "normal middle-class family" (meaning you expect a new, fun and yet somewhat challenging lifestyle) because they are NOT told that the host family (if they can even find one for you that is, you may waste two months in your home country because AFS has already taken your money and isn't in a hurry, you are.) may be from the lower class and have financial difficulties just living (i.e. the house may be in disrepair, and I mean broken-kitchen broken-bathroom level disrepair).
As someone from the lower class myself (definitely not a "bella donna" middle class rich kid, I have seen my fair share of money problems and family problems in my own family myself) I have nothing against those who are less financially well-off, but AFS really should not allow families who are struggling to make end's meet to host students. It's a massive burden both on the families and the students as both parties' quality of life will suffer, which is obviously a recipe for good memories for both parties. Both parties would be better off not hosting and not being hosted.
Anyways, as a student, I tried my best to learn the local language as soon as I knew which country I was going to, and that did help with communication after arrival, but no amount of language will help with a host that is obviously not suited to host you, but is hosting you because of god knows what. As others have pointed out, AFS just cares about getting the students in a family, because that's how this greedy dysfunctional organization makes money. Non-profit? Yeah, right.
As you may have guessed, I was not happy from the get go at my host family's house, which is really not their fault, but rather AFS's for doing zero vetting. It was so bad that I even had problems sleeping because the walls were paper thin. I had a breakdown not soon after that, you can say it's my fault, which I would partly agree with, but honestly that blame lies with AFS for even allowing this to happen in the first place.
I tried asking for a change of host to the country's AFS branch, but in return I got told it was all my fault, I'm spoiled, cultural differences, blah blah blah, because it's better for them to do nothing, less work that way.
So I turned to social media for help, and the next day AFS came to me and told me to delete my post in a threatening manner. As an exchange student in a foreign country whose life is basically on the hands of AFS, I had no other choice but to comply. No words about changing host families of course.
Surprisingly, I got what I wanted next month (maybe what I did really caught their attention) and I transferred to my new family. Things were going well initially but then gradually deteriorated due to language barriers (the new host family barely spoke English), and as I can only speak the local language at a beginner's level, communication was a massive problem that AFS did basically nothing to resolve.
Sure, the local chapter correspondent was a nice person, but he/she was far too busy to help with solving such complicated issues. The monthly meetings are, in my opinion, token gestures because if the problems can be solved with such a short meeting, it wasn't even a problem in the first place, and if it can't be solved, then the meeting's not gonna help.
Fast forward a couple weeks, and I received a call from the local AFS saying I apparently had mental issues, and needed to see a doctor (which I did not have, I can assure you. The accusations are self-harm related and I was, and still am too scared of harming my body in the first place to even do such things).
At the doctor's, the host family and the doctor talked about what I supposedly did (from what I could make out with my beginner level proficiency), and then the doctor asked me about how I was feeling, did I do such things, etc... after giving me a physical checkup.
The next week when the report came out, I was horrified to see that the doctor had given me a positive diagnosis and was in urgent need of medical care despite the report clearly stating that I was perfectly healthy physically and that the diagnosis was purely based off of what the host family said I did. The host family said I had lost a lot of weight over the past year despite only having hosted me for less than a quarter of a year and ignored the fact that I had actually gained weight after arriving in that country.
I was then promptly kicked out of the country and sent back to my home country at my own expense. No refunds, no apologies, no chance to proof my innocence, just tens of thousands of wasted dollars.
Don't join this god forsaken program. Stay far, far away. The potential mental damage is not worth it.
