7/30/2007 - 7 foreign exchange students due soon

American Field Service seeking more hosts here
by Patty Machelor

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

In a couple of weeks, Lydia Hamstra will have the chance to practice speaking Italian again.

The 16-year-old Salpointe High School junior returned earlier this month from a semester in Italy, and now her family is about to host an Italian student for the coming school year. The exchanges are the work of the Tucson chapter of the American Field Service, which is still seeking homes for more students.

So far this year, seven students are set to arrive in Tucson between Aug. 8 and 10. Suzy Selby, Tucson’s hosting coordinator, says more host families are needed. Nearly 50 students from overseas still need placement in the Southwest if they are to visit this year.

“For a lot of people, it’s a really big commitment to have someone in your home for a year,” she said.

AFS volunteers try to invite potential hosts and hostesses to group activities so they can see the students interact and ask questions. “I think once you see how it works, it breaks down that barrier of fear of having another person that you’re responsible for,” she said.

Three of the seven who are coming to Tucson are also part of a U.S. State Department program called Youth Exchange and Study, which pays for visits between U.S. students and students from Muslim countries.

The three participating Tucson families will host students from Turkey, Indonesia and Egypt.

“They have extra programs that they are required to do throughout the year that are civic-minded,” Selby said of the Youth Exchange and Study students.

American Field Service started out as a volunteer ambulance service in World War I. Then, after World War II, Stephen Galatti and about 250 other drivers created the AFS International Scholarships, with an initial focus on students from Japan and Germany.

“After World War II, the founder of the exchange program decided something needed to change in terms of understanding and compassion and world peace,” Selby said.

The program quickly grew, and at the time of Galatti’s death in 1964 it included 60 countries, according to the AFS Web site. Selby, 56, spent the summer of 1968 in Belgium as part of an AFS exchange.

“My trip was probably one of the most major life-defining moments that I had,” she said. “You leave defined as a certain person, then you go and live in another culture and you are no longer just an American, you are also a person of this new place.”

About five years ago, Selby became involved again. In addition to volunteering with the local chapter, she has been a hostess and has had a child go abroad. Her daughter, Sammy, spent a summer in Buenos Aires two years ago.

“It gave her the idea for her career,” she said, “She went to Argentina for the summer and just had absolutely the most wonderful experience.”
Selby’s daughter is now attending the University of Southern California, majoring in international relations with a minor in Spanish and a concentration on South America.

Lydia Hamstra agrees that the experience of traveling and living abroad was wonderful.

“At first it was scary, because I didn’t know the language and I couldn’t say simple things, and that got really frustrating at times.”
But after a while, she learned enough Italian to be comfortable.
“It was so rewarding,” she said. “You get to meet so many people.”
Lydia’s mother, Terri Hamstra, 45, said they were looking for exchange programs online a year ago when they came across AFS.

Since then, Lydia has returned from a semester in Padua, Italy, and they are about to begin hosting a 16-year-old Italian girl from Salerno for the school year.

“We haven’t met her, but we’ve e-mailed and instant-messaged and spoken on the phone,” Hamstra said. “She speaks incredible English.”
Students who participate in AFS are between the ages of 15 and 18.
Background checks are done on all prospective families, Selby said, and AFS is “very open about what constitutes a family.” Single parents, people without children and same-sex couples are all invited to participate.

At a minimum, host families provide meals and a bed for the student, said Kelly Matchett-Morris, the Tucson chapter president. Matchett-Morris, 44, and his partner of 16 years, Glenn Matchett-Morris, 51, have been hosting students for four years. He said students can choose whether to live with the gay couple or wait until a more traditional family steps forward.

“We became very close with the three German boys and their families, whom we now know very well,” he said of his own experience.
They’ve visited the boys’ families in Germany, he said, and one of their former students still calls almost every Sunday.

Kelly Matchett-Morris said they are not hosting this year because it’s his first as chapter president, but they plan to host again in the future.
“If you’ve got space in your heart to love someone, do it, because you get so much more out of it then you could possibly put in,” he said.