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    The World is Yours!

    Open your home, or open your world to endless possibilites
    by hosting or becoming a foreign exchange student.

    AFS at Highlands
    Highlands has been involved with the AFS (American Field Service) Exchange Program for over 50 years!  Through the years, Highlands families have hosted students from all over the world, and Highlands has afforded its own students the opportunity to be exchange students in countries such as Greece, Costa Rica, and Germany, to name a few.

     
    Explore the World!
    Open your world to endless possibilites by living and learning in another country! Consider becoming an exchange student. Choose from more than 120 programs in over 40 countries for a yearlong or semester trip. Scholarships and financial aid are available to assist in funding your trip. Visit www.afsusa.org for more information or for directions on how to apply.
     
     
    Experience the World Without Leaving Home!
    The Highlands AFS Chapter is currently seeking host families for the school year. If you are interested in hosting a foreign exchange student, please contact Kathy Harenski at kharenski@icloud.com / 412-848-3952 or Rachael Ochoa at rachael.ochoa@gmail.com / 301-785-3248 for more information. Many students will need to be placed with host families across Western Pennsylvania for the next school year. 
     
    Ever wonder what you can do to help change the world, beginning with life in your own community? By opening your home and sharing your family with a high school student from another country, you can help to build bridges of intercultural understanding at a time when the world really needs it.

    This year, more than 2,800 young people from 60 countries will arrive in the U.S. to study for 11 months in communities across the country. They also come for 6 month semester stay.  Enjoying daily family life, meals together, activities like going to the movies and in general having fun, will help to make a World of Difference to a young visitor who is eager to experience what it's like to live as a member of a family, school, and community in the U.S.

    Host families provide a bed and meals, and the same guidance and support to students as they would to their own son or daughter. Host families and students receive support from local AFS Volunteers. Host families ARE NOT required to provide the student with clothing or medical coverage as each student will be responsible for his or her own clothes items and AFS provides medical coverage for each student.

    Host an AFS Exchange Student and build bridges of intercultural understanding. It's a gift you'll give and receive. Most families have no idea how much they'll gain until they say yes! To learn more, call 1-800-876-2377 or email afsinfo@afs.org. You can also complete a hosting interest form at www.usa.afs.org. 

    AFS 'aunts', 'uncles' are also needed, as well as liaisons who volunteer to meet monthly with host families and their students. Call AFS for details or local representatives:  

        Kathy Harenski @ 412-848-3952  email: kharenski@icloud.com

    Rachael Ochoa @ 301-785-3248  email: rachael.ochoa@gmail.com

     
    AFS HISTORY: AFS Intercultural Programs (formerly the American Field Service) is a worldwide, nonprofit organization that has been a leader in high school student exchange for 60 years. During World Wars I & II, young Americans volunteered as ambulance drivers in the American Field Service evacuating the wounded from battlefields. When these brave, forward thinking individuals returned home, they founded a movement to promote understanding and peace through international student exchanges, known today as AFS Intercultural Programs. The AFS Founders believedas AFS believes todaythat the way to build a more just and peaceful world begins when people from different countries and cultures meet, learn together, and better understand one another. In 1947, for the first time ever, AFS exchanged 52 young people from 11 countries formerly at war, establishing a legacy of hope for future generations.

    Today, AFS exchanges more than 11,000 students each year among a partnership of more than 50 AFS Partner Countries. AFS proudly acknowledges an alumni network of more than 300,000 individuals who have studied abroad on an AFS Program. Former AFS Students live in more than 100 countries around the world. As one of the largest volunteer-based organizations of its kind, AFS has 30,000 volunteers worldwide and approximately 5,000 in the U.S.

     

    For more information about the AFS Program, please visit www.afsusa.org.