STATEMENT FROM AFS INTERCULTURAL PROGRAMS PRESIDENT FRANCISCO CAZAL
AND PRESIDENT OF AFS-USA, ALEX PLINIO

Dear Colleagues:

The International Education Week theme of International Education: Improving Student Achievement Around the World is especially meaningful to AFS-USA, and to the AFS Partners that are located in more than 50 countries worldwide. As we prepare to celebrate IEW, we extend our sincere appreciation to the exchange students, families, staff, volunteers, educators, and others who support the mission of building a more just and peaceful world through international exchange and intercultural learning.

Our world today is infinitely more complex than it was even just a few decades ago. The challenges to understanding our neighbors across our national borders, let alone those who live on the other side of the globe, sometime seem overwhelming. How often do we hear people say, “Why don’t they understand us?” when talking about how we in the USA are perceived by people from other countries and cultures. Chances are, we hear that phrase much more often than, “Why don’t we understand them?” Changes in perceptions often begin by asking the right questions, and it is those questions that lead us to realize that developing intercultural understanding is a shared responsibility—a two way street.

With more than 11,000 students in more than 50 countries around the world involved in an international exchange this year, AFS helps our participants to begin to ask questions about the world and about their place in it. To have the opportunity to study abroad is to have an opportunity to challenge preconceptions about our global neighbors, and inevitably, to ask ourselves important questions about who we are and what defines us as individuals and as a nation. The answers to these questions often lead us to a better understanding of ourselves and how we and our nation fits into the world.

This past year, AFS sponsored an independent research study designed to assess the impact of the AFS study abroad experience. The results of the study demonstrated that participants in AFS programs had significantly:

· Increased intercultural competence
· Increased knowledge of the host culture
· Increased fluency in the language of the host country
· Less anxiety in interacting with people from different cultures
· Increased friendship with people from other cultures
· Greater intercultural networks

The study proved what we already had learned from our participants by listening to them as they told us about how their exchange program changed they way they saw themselves and the world.

In September during our World Congress in Turin, Italy, we awarded three scholarships to the winners of the AFS Student Essay Competition 2005. We asked AFS participants to write an essay on the theme of Peace Through Understanding and we received hundreds of responses from across the AFS Network. One of the prize winners, Hart Ford-Hodges from the United States spent her AFS exchange year abroad in Germany as a Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange Scholar. Hart’s beliefs and preconceptions were challenged during her stay in Germany, and her presence in that country challenged the beliefs and preconceptions of those she met. Hart wrote about some things that surprised her about her own way of thinking:

“…some surprises were nasty and abstract; monsters with names like prejudice, stereotypes and xenophobia.”

But when Hart reflected on her AFS experience in Germany she found that:

“…looking back, I realize the actual experience overwhelmed my preconceptions. It transformed me, the average American Teenager, into a global citizen by stretching me vertically, diagonally, and by expanding my chest like helium fills a balloon. Germany and Germans were only part of my year a beginning that blossomed into much more. I met Italian, Australian, Indonesian, Chinese and Mexican exchange students...I conquered my monsters – prejudices against housewives, the French and Muslims. My Muslim prejudice monster lived and died especially quietly.”

Hart’s experiences and the experiences of many others who embark on a journey to learn about the world and its cultures are indeed a reason to celebrate and an opportunity to appreciate how intercultural understanding can help us become citizens of a more just and peaceful world.

On behalf of everyone at AFS Intercultural Programs, we wish you all a wonderful week filled with learning and sharing as we work together in Improving Student Achievement Around the World.

Sincerely,