Through the generosity of our former AFS-USA Board Member and longtime volunteer Jim Walker, who made a multi-year gift to support our work with young alumni, two young volunteers recently traveled to Colorado to act as guest speakers at the Colorado Rockies Area Team volunteer retreat. Malvina Millet from the Massachusetts Bay Team and Moritz Schimmele from the Greater Chicago Team were able to speak about how their teams engage younger volunteers as well as learn from the Colorado Rockies Team about a variety of topics that they hope to bring back to their teams. A few of their thoughts on the importance and benefit of this event follow:
“The weekend in Colorado was fantastic. It was a valuable exchange on all aspects of our local chapter work: from different host family recruitment and community outreach strategies to volunteer engagement, team organization, student well-being and support. Getting to know the other area teams was extremely helpful and I am sure that we will all draw from the idea exchange for a long time. Thank you to Jim Walker for the contribution in making this cross-chapter exchange possible and Kim Allegretti and the whole team at Colorado Rockies team for a weekend full of laughter, inspiring stories and in sharing our common love for our mission.”
-Moritz Schimmele, Greater Chicago Team
“The event was very insightful about how other area teams are organized and function. Cross-team exchanges are like cross culture exchanges: part of AFS culture. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to be part of it!”
-Malvina Millet, Massachusetts Bay Team
“Collaborating across AFS Area Teams is one of the most productive ways to share ideas and best practices to help all AFS volunteers become better advocates for creating global understanding through intercultural exchange. The Colorado volunteers and our visiting volunteers all learned so much from each other and our problem-solving discussions were incredibly effective – it was so helpful to hear how other teams face similar issues to those also confronting our volunteers.”
-Kim Allegretti, Colorado Rockies Team
About the Colorado Rockies Volunteer Retreat:
AFS Colorado Rockies Area Team just held our volunteer retreat up in our beautiful mountains at Snow Mountain Ranch and we all left inspired for an incredible year of intercultural exchange ahead. The topics on our agenda included: an introduction to our team organization structure; volunteer opportunities; how to engage young volunteers; fundraising; tech help; primers on MyAFS and AFS website features; liaison training; training for interviews; and a discussion about our team scholarships including moving forward with the Faces of America program.
Prior to the event, the Colorado team held zoom conferences to collaborate with volunteers from the Missouri Gateway AT and the New Mexico & Beyond AT to learn best practices for launching a robust Faces of America scholarship program. In addition, to help our team open up to new ideas about engaging our volunteers, especially younger volunteers, we had guest speakers from other area teams join our retreat in person. The cross-team collaboration sent our discussions in new directions and brought new tools to help our team advocate for AFS. With the added bonus of having AFS volunteers from the Greater Chicago AT and Massachusetts Bay AT join us, the exchange of ideas gave us new insight into how to better support our hosted international students, our study abroad students, our host families, our schools, and, of course, our wonderful AFS volunteers.
Thanks again to Jim Walker, and the Colorado Rockies, Greater Chicago and Massachusetts Bay Teams for making this possible.
