Now that the first wave of hosted students has arrived, it’s a good time for a reminder about our contact requirements for students and host families. Maintaining regular contact throughout the year with our participants and their host families, whether in person, by phone, or at group meetings, is key to building trusting relationships, assisting them in learning about each other, and resolving issues and concerns early on.

For a list of all contact and visit requirements, please click here, taking special note of the 1=4 initiative which will enable liaisons to complete four requirements in one visit within the first month of the student’s arrival. In short, the four requirements that can be covered in August are the regular August contact, the in person contact with the student, the in person contact with the host family, and the first 30 or 60-day in home visit (provided the person making the contact is a different volunteer than the one who previously interviewed the host family)!

Please don’t forget to log your contacts and visits in the new “Contacts & Visits” widget on MyAFS! While the widget is very intuitive, first time users may wish to click here to access a video and written instructions on how to use this new feature.