In honor of AFS-USA’s 75th Anniversary and to celebrate May 2023 as AFS-USA Community Appreciation Month, we are pleased to announce the AFS-USA 75th Anniversary Community Changemaker Awards!

The focus of the awards is to celebrate community members, leaders, or groups that support AFS and our mission in your local community.

We are asking AFS-USA Volunteers and/or Teams to nominate a person, community member, group, organization, or company. AFS-USA will select the winners and create an award for the Volunteer or AFS Team to present to the awardee that they nominated. AFS-USA will also promote winners nationally and in their communities.

Click here to watch AFS-USA President Tara Hofmann announce the creation of this award!
Nominee Criteria 

• The focus of this award is to celebrate the communities and their members that support AFS; thus, nominees cannot be part of the “AFS Family.” Volunteers, Host Families, Sending Families, and people affiliated with an AFS School (Teacher, Principal, School Board, etc.)
• Nominees should be a person or group outside of AFS that works to support the Area Team, Chapter, Sponsored Program Cluster, and/or mission of AFS locally in their community. Examples of possible nominees include:
  • A community group or organization that hosts events for students or the local AFS Team, such as (but not limited to) Sponsored Program (SP) cluster enrichment activities, fundraising activities, etc.;
  • A person or group that helps to foster Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA) for your AFS Team. For example, a cultural group/organization you may partner with or the sign language interpreter(s) who provides services for orientations;
  • A group that provides space/resources to AFS to host events;
  • Local government representatives;
  • A person who donates their time or services to the local AFS team (not an AFS-USA Volunteer).

Nomination Process and Schedule

• The nomination process will start the week of March 20th with the introduction of the award at the 2023 ECA Conference.
• Volunteers can submit their nominations via this brief online nomination form.
  • The form takes an estimated five-to-ten minutes to complete.
• The nomination process will close on April 5, 2023.

Award Process

• You will be notified in April if your nominee wins to help provide you with time to plan and prepare how you will to present the award to your winner.
• We will publicly announce the winners in May in conjunction with May 2023 being AFS Community Appreciation Month!
• Awards will be mailed to Volunteers, and we ask that a Volunteer or the AFS Team present the award to the winner and capture the moment, by photo and/or video
• AFS-USA will promote winners and they will be publicized on social media and in other public-facing ways. We will also submit a press release to local news media.

We look forward to learning who in your community you’d like to honor as an AFS-USA Community Changemaker!

Please send questions to Candace O’Malley:  comalley@afsusa.org