The first 2018-2019 hosted students are ready for placement! We have also made changes to how students are being made available based on feedback from staff and volunteers. The changes are designed to help ensure that our students are placed with host families earlier using simpler processes that benefit all teams and keep our systems from crashing.

Please continue reading to find out what’s new and the benefits that will result for our students and your team. A complete listing of the Hosting Distribution Process can be found here. We are also working on improvements to the MyAFS Placements Widget. In the meantime, click here to learn how to find hosted students to place.

Changes for the 2018-2019 School Year (NH18)

Minneapolis (MSP) and Washington, DC (IAD) are being added as new Gateways. Volunteer Teams near each of these cities have a significant concentration of hosted students who will now be picked up by their local Area Team volunteers or host families without needing additional air or ground transportation. For departure, volunteers will drop the students off after their End of Stay event in time for their respective international flights. In addition, the Houston Gateway is being replaced by the Dallas International Gateway, meaning that students’ international travel that would have previously terminated in Houston will now terminate in Dallas.

The 2017 “through ticketing” pilot in the Houston Gateway (i.e., purchasing a ticket from the sending country directly to the closest local host community airport) will be expanded for NH18 to include all partners who will have students hosted in the Dallas Gateway Region. This includes the following destinations: Austin, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Little Rock, San Antonio and Wichita.

In prior years, all non-YES students were assigned to their international travel gateways right away and put into “Regionally Available” status. Beginning with the NH18 placement cycle, students from the following countries will still be assigned to international travel gateways and made Regionally Available: Austria, Brazil, Chile, China, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, and Thailand. Students from all other countries (including YES & CBYX students) will initially be made Nationally Available and can be placed with a family in any team. Until these Nationally Available students are assigned to their gateways starting in April, they cannot be Community Placed. Given that we will have both Nationally and Regionally Available students, when a student needs to be released from a AT Hold, please enter a “Release AT Hold” placement request.

Other significant changes for NH18:

• Once student applications are ready to be released, AFS Staff will make them Regionally or Nationally Available on a rolling basis, including YES students who were previously released by country group with advance warning to staff and volunteers.
• Community Placing of Regionally Available students is allowed starting on March 1, 2018 at 7pm local time in each gateway city, instead of midnight Eastern Time. Teams may CP as many students as they choose, as long as the total number of placed and CPed students does not exceed 85% of the team’s hosting goal and the team is adhering to its Sponsored Programs and Big 6 matrix of students from China, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, and Thailand.
• Students who are Nationally Available cannot be Community Placed until they are assigned to their gateway regions starting in April.
• One AT Hold request may be submitted per student per Area Team per day even if multiple families are interested in the same student.
• The 1st arrivals placement deadline is July 18, 2018.
• Teams will be required to be Placed/Community Placed to 85% of their NH18 hosting goal by June 1. After June 1, any remaining Core program students in Regionally Available will be Community Placed to ensure that distribution of final students is as equitable as possible across both strong and weak teams and that each student has a placement champion.

To read the complete Hosting Distribution Process including Key Dates, please click here.

How do these changes benefit our students?

• New gateways and through ticketing help students fly into airports closer to where they will be hosted, which reduces travel time (including long bus rides) for many of our students upon arrival and at departure.
• The process encourages earlier placements and makes it more likely that all students will be placed on time, ideally by the first arrivals deadline of July 18th.

How does this benefit my team?

• Nationally Available students will give teams in smaller gateways access to students from a greater variety of countries than they had previously and makes more students available for placement once Community Placing begins on March 1st.
• Making more students available earlier should lead to earlier placements, which should reduce volunteer stress in the summer.
• Making students from our big partners Regionally Available helps to ensure that all students are being promoted by volunteers and TDS.
• Both strong and weak teams are given access to students they want to place so that all teams succeed.
• Many of the placement process rules have been simplified and the process for Sponsored Programs students has been more closely aligned to the process for all other students.

Thank you for your assistance in working to find great families for our 2018-2019 students!