Best Practices Host Family Pre-Arrival Orientation - Reminders

From AFSWiki

Let the parents know that they may get 250 free business cards for their students from www.vistaprint.com. They are very fast on delivery. One only pays a modest shipping fee. Order as soon as the families know who their AFSer are. These are terrific to share with their friends and teachers at school when they meet new friends. This is a good one for volunteers to e-mail all of your parents to remind them again whether you mentioned it at their pre-arrival orientation or not. The ideal is to have all of the liaisons order them for their AFSers and present them to them when they first meet them.

Volunteers need to make it very clear that the student's ID card needs to be with the AFSer at all times with the local AFS liaison's number on it as well as their parent's number. It is best if it gets laminated. If AFS could borrow a machine for the arrival orientation, this would be terrific. Then AFS could laminate the cards as soon as they arrive. Some students or parents have made a map to their home from Google/mapquest, folded it and kept it in the AFSers wallet so that when they are riding with someone other than the family they can help them get to their house easily before they know the area well. (Contributed by: User:BWills).