I am very very disappointed with the program. The girl my family chose is from Japan. She was recommended to us by AFS and not on the website. She communicated with us right away as well as her family and the exchange student her family was hosting from Australia. My granddaughter and i became very attached to her from the beginning and planned to visit the family next year. First of all i would not recommend getting close to the family right away until you meet the child and not make plans on meeting until you know how the stay is going.
The first warning sign was my exchange students exchange student contacted us the day my student left for California from Japan. Her exchange student told us how "entitled and spoiled" our student was, how the students family mistreated her, how the student was when it came to boys ect. I told my granddaughter, who is the same age as our student, to ignore the comments and lets get to know our student for who she is.
Boy did we.
At first things went rather well. We grew to love her like another family member. She participated in family events, and it was actually a joy to have her around. She became very close to my granddaughter as they were both seniors in the same school. We made plans to travel with her, ect.
Two months into it the student started becoming lazy and did not want to clean. I had to comprise a schedule so she and my granddaughter would take turns doing normal chores like cleaning their room and bathroom, taking out trash, dishes ect. I noticed this girl was eating in her bedroom. I asked her several times to stop. My granddaughter became depressed because the girl was starting drama with her male friends and began to feel like she was the girls caretaker. I started to see what the other exchange student warned me of. Also, she ate like a linebacker. I understand we are supposed to feed them but can we have a limit? I am not joking when i say she eats her weight in food per week if not more. When i called the liaison to vent their solution was to take her from us. This upset us. We still cared very much for her and did not want her to leave. I just didn't expect to spend so much money out of pocket to feed the child. Eventually we had a sit down with AFS and they agreed to let her stay and assess the situation in a month.
Well things didn't last that long. After realizing dishes were missing and i was getting more and more ants in the house i inspected the students room and realized she was a food hoarder. I found food, dishes, empty food jars hidden in the closet, under the bed, in drawers and a half container of salad dressing in her laundry basket and boxes of trash hidden under the bed. At the time she was with one of the volunteers at her house visiting with their exchange student and siblings. I called and explained the situation and was told they were placing her someplace else. That's when the nightmare began. The student was placed with another family and this student proceeded to bash me to other students, friends of my granddaughter and whoever would listen. She lied about me not feeding her, said i made her get up at 11 pm to clean and it goes on. She is known to spread lies and even her mother commented on the weight gain, something that wouldn't have happened had i not fed her like she said.
I do not feel supported by the staff at AFS and feel like they took her side immediately. I opened up my heart and home to this "prima donna" who clearly did not clean at home (as her exchange student stated) was boy crazy and had mental health issues. I do not think AFS screens thoroughly enough. Also feeding a child and housing them for 10 months is excessive now that i think about it when its for free. This child complained that i made her pay for her own food when we went out to eat. Yes, that happened twice. But given the fact that she was eating me out of house and home, would eat everyone else food at dinner when we went out if they didn't want it, would order more than the average person could eat and her family would go out to dinner constantly and always make her exchange student pay, well she has nerve to say the least.
At this point i am using this forum to vent. I'm sure there are others who have had positive experiences. After hosting i talked to several friends who hosted at one point or another in their life and stated they would never do it again and neither will I. I feel used and taken advantage of and to top it off this ungrateful student is going around spreading lies about me to boot. It is not worth the aggravation.
AFS
I am writing this post as a volunteer host family. We are going thru this experience at the moment and I would like to share some things that I have learned. It has not been easy, but we are learning from this experience.
First of all, I would recommend reading about AFS, getting to know your chapter coordinators and doing your research before you accept having a foreign exchange student in your home. Ask a lot of questions about the student and if possible try to see if she/he will be a good match for your family. It can be a very frustrating situation if you get the wrong person. I know that this can be challenging because AFS does not provide a lot of information and in our case, our student did not reply to our e-mails prior to coming to our house nor he did ask any questions about our family and expectations. In our case, we selected this particular student for his interests, but we have not seen much of that so wondering how much of the students' bios is really accurate.
AFS's best interest is to place a student in any family because this is money for the company. They really do not care about the family. As long as you have a nice house and live in a nice area, I learned that this program is expensive. Still cheaper for students, though, because they would have to pay more money if they paid for food or housing. So in some ways, these students get a good deal also.
Second, as a host family talk about expectations you want to have with the foreign exchange student. Having a stranger at home can add stress and frustration plus adding cultural differences even more. Communicate to the student in the beginning what your expectations are in terms of household activities, family relationships, finances, vacations, behaviors in your house. This will reduce headaches. I think that AFS does not do a good job communicating this to the students. You need to set the tone of this experience, will you let the student call you mom, dad, by your name...etc. This is a process and do not expect that this stranger will adapt to your family right away. If you decide to be called mom or dad, make sure that you treat them as such; otherwise, there will be some issues of resentment if there is a difference in treatment between the student and your own children. So it is very important that you decide what you want to do and how you want this person to be included in your family.
AFS tries hard to incorporate the students as part of your family since day one, but this is unrealistic because you do not know this person. It is a process that develops with time as the relationship progresses. Of course, AFS wants that you fall in love with this person and treat them as your own. But, this is a process that develops over time. AFS is unrealistic. This company has a good mission and goals, but unrealistic from day 1.
Finances is a very important topic to discuss. Our student was expecting that we were paying for everything. He thought we were paying for an expensive music instrument for her school. When we told him that his natural family had to pay for it, he did not want to buy the instrument until he checked with them. But, he did not think that way when he thought we were paying for it. Sometimes, he would forget his money when he asked to buy personal supplies and we had to pay so it was awkward at times. So to keep a healthy relationship and avoid resentments, communicate to your student and set expectations. Advice them and offer some suggestions about how they can budget themselves and what they need to pay for. Some of these kids are too young and had never dealt with money issues so they come to you expecting that you will take care of them. But, it is important that you set some boundaries in the beginning to avoid frustrations and resentments.
In our case, our student who never took the time to ask questions or answer our emails prior to his visit, came with very high expectations. He thought he would make a lot of American friends right away and that he would go on trips every weekend. Kind of like a tour travel agency. We provide food, housing, restaurant outings, movie outings, free transportation, we decided to bring her along with our family on vacations all paid by us and yet feel like it has not been enough. (By, the way, you are not required to bring students on vacation with you. This was a personal choice we made). He has also found out that it has not been so easy to make friends in High School right away as he thought. Of course, if depends on the student's personality and cultural adjustment. But, you may need to help with this also by introducing to other people and providing experiences that could lead to more friendships.
I think that some of these students forget that we are volunteers and that we do not get paid for anything. On the contrary, we have paid out of our own pocket for a lot of things. They forget that we are families who have to work also and have responsibilities to pay bills to keep a house. In our experience, I think that some of these students have no idea about the amount of work and money involved to host them in our homes. But, as I said, we are volunteers and we did it because we wanted to help.
This AFS experience has some nice things like exchanging some cultural information and learning about different cultures, which is nice. But, overall it is more work than what you think. It is a big responsibility and you are left on your own. You will also be a counselor at times, you may have to deal with temper tantrums like in our case with our student (as any other teenager), cultural differences, misunderstandings...etc
Yes, AFS provides some mandatory student events and they are required to call you to check on the student every month. But, that is pretty much it. They do not care about anything else. If your family is having some difficulties, this is your problem not theirs.
If you are really interested in hosting a student, do your research before hand. Having the right person in your house can make a huge difference. It could turn into a positive experience for the whole family or a nightmare where you get stuck with this strange person for a year and you will just hope that it is over soon as in some of the posts I have read.
For foreign exchange students, I would recommend the same, do your research and ask a lot of questions before you decide to live with a family. If you do not ask questions, you may come with very high expectations to find out that this experience is not what you thought it would be and there will be disappointment on both sides. So read, investigate, research about the culture and adjust your expectations if you decide to go to a family.
Overall, we are not very impressed by this AFS company. We will not be hosting any other students in our home. I think that once is enough for us. Good Luck to you all!
Comments
Due to the high cost of participation, this program accepts upper middle income students from abroad who bring with them spoiled, ungrateful, "prima donna" attitudes of entitlement. If you want to be "used" as a free hotel or "B&B" without any gratitude or appreciation then this is the program for you. Be forewarned, you'll be lucky to get so much as a "thank you" for anything and everything that you do know matter how much it costs you!
I'm going to the US this summer from Japan. Guess what I still don't have a host family. We were supposed to leave in August 10th. People who already where placed just went to the US a few days ago. There are still many people who don't have a host family and are stuck in our country. Are new departure date is September 8th. I just can't stand that people who are stuck like me and people who are already in the US have month difference in this exchange program. It's just not fair. If you're not placed to a host family until August you have to leave in late September or even October and still come back to your home country on the same date with people who went on August. Actually there where like 4 people last year who even couldn't go on September. I gave tons of phone calls to AFS Japan and even USA but they tell us nothing because of some kind of treaty made between the two countries. Students who are stuck on their home country are having the worst summer vacation ever. We can't see Facebook because we can see the posts of people who are already having the time of their lives already. It's just too harsh to watch. I know it's hard to find a host family because it's all volunteer work. But it's clear that they should fix this situation. I couldn't believe that they've been doing this for years. Their must have been a lot of people who had the same feeling like me. I just hope now that I have a nice host family soon. I
The pros of being a host family are the incredible students. We were sent a very long list of possible students, including summaries and introductions written by the students themselves. We were allowed to choose students who would be a good fit for our family based on their interests, personality, etc. so in that sense, our experience has been wonderful.
The difficulty for us is the very tedious, redundant, unnecessary amount of contact we're required to have with the volunteers. I'm in favor of strict background checks as well as regular contact, and getting the international students together for activities. All that is great. However, the volunteers and liaisons tend to make every "mandatory" activity three times as long as it needs to be, with no real purpose. Every part of training seems to be repeated 3-4 times and if you are a busy family trying to juggle bio kids, an international kid, school, and bringing your student to cultural and tourist attractions, it's easy to get frustrated by the endless, repetitive, lengthy contacts from the various volunteers.
If you're perhaps a part time or stay at home/homeschool family, or looking for a social outlet in addition to hosting, this would be a good fit. If you're a student, I'd look carefully at the family and make sure it's a fit for you as far as you can tell, ahead of time. You're allowed and encouraged to have contact before you arrive, so that's a good time to ensure it will be the experience you hope for. It's also really expensive and they expect students to pay for additional items once they're here, so check into what program will give you the most for your $.
