From November 4-7, the AFS-USA Summit took place in Alexandria, VA. Approximately 90 volunteers and staff from all over the US (and 15 partner staff from all over the world!) were able to attend, plus another 130 volunteers and staff who registered to join parts of the Summit virtually. 

The weekend kicked off on Thursday evening, November 4, with an opening address, delivered via Zoom, by AFS-USA’s President, Tara Hofmann. The link to the recording of Tara’s address can be found here. 

The theme of this year’s Summit was “Leading Together”. Invitees were largely volunteer and staff members of the nine National Council Advisory Groups and the three National Council Committees. Each Advisory Group was asked to lead a 75-minute online session on a topic related to the work of their Advisory Group. Attendees to these sessions were the virtual participants who joined the sessions from home, via Zoom. 

Each recorded session will be added to the appropriate Advisory Group page on MyAFS Help & Learning. Links to each Advisory Group’s page can be found here. 

When the Advisory Groups were not presenting to the virtual participants, there was time throughout the weekend for them to meet together to collaborate with other Advisory Group members. There were also sessions around advocacy, creating an AFS-USA “elevator” pitch, and a panel discussion with educators and with AFS partner staff about advocating for AFS with schools. 

AFS-USA President, Tara Hofmann, also hosted a Question and Answer session during the weekend. The recording of this conversation can be found here. 

On Sunday evening, the Volunteer Recognition Committee (VRC) announced this year’s volunteer award winners. The VRC will be posting more information about the awards soon, so keep checking MyAFS News! 

One final highlight was the debut of an AFS-USA “Thank You” video that features AFS students thanking their community volunteers for all the work they do on behalf of the students. 

If you’d like to see pictures from the Summit, they can be found on the AFS-USA Flickr page. All pre-recorded videos can be found on the 2021 Summit YouTube playlist.

Thank you to all who made this year’s Summit a success!