AFS-USA empowers people to become globally engaged citizens by delivering meaningful intercultural experiences that provide the knowledge and skills needed to help create a more just and peaceful world.
Our Mission
Our Values
Individuals have the power to make change.
Inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility (IDEA) are central to our work.
Following our founders' example, volunteerism sustains our organization and inspires our participants to make change in their communities.
The AFS Effect
AFS programs foster transformation that lasts a lifetime. Today’s exchange students are tomorrow’s changemakers: diplomats; thought leaders; influencers in the international business and non-profit communities. Every new exchange student is another global citizen in progress—an individual primed to help build a more just and peaceful world.
And the impact doesn’t stop with the students. Host families’ lives are transformed by new members from across the globe and host communities gain greater cultural diversity.
That’s THE AFS EFFECT.
Our History
AFS began as a volunteer ambulance corps created in 1915. This timeline tells the story of the American Field Service Ambulance Drivers and how AFS was transformed from a wartime humanitarian aid organization into a groundbreaking international secondary school exchange, volunteer, and intercultural learning organization with a bold mission: to help build a more peaceful world by promoting understanding among cultures.
More than 70 years later, the AFS Mission continues to respond to the needs of an increasingly complex world, offering programs abroad in 45+ countries and hosting international students from more than 90 countries. True to the spirit of our founders, these life-changing intercultural learning programs are made possible by the dedicated work of AFS Volunteers—more than 4,000 in the U.S. and over 50,000 worldwide.
Our Leadership
AFS-USA Executive Staff
AFS-USA Board of Directors
Accreditation
AFS-USA is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that is audited annually and complies with the program standards set forth by the Council on Standards for International Educational Travel (CSIET).
