NH11 Hosting Wrap Up and SH12 Kickoff
From AFSWiki
NH11 Hosting Wrap Up
A big thanks to all of you who helped make the NH11 hosting cycle possible. The final placement count was 2517. Thank you again for making the dreams of 2517 students come true; you have helped change the lives of thousands around the world.
Right now, we are working to convert the 155 welcome families remaining. 44 are from first arrivals and therefore need to be converted by 11/4 (12 week deadline). We are in the process of updating and closing all NH11 service cases. We are also trying to capture all those last minute leads into Global Link as well for accurate lead counts.
Staff are sending a thank you card to all schools that are hosting with us this year as a small acknowledgement of their relationship with AFS. And we will be sending a survey next week to all hosting volunteers as part of our debrief to determine what worked well this year and how we can improve for next year.
Kickoff to SH12 Hosting!
The distribution of SH12 applications began in late September, although the applications are slowly coming in. There are only two applications distributed thus far nationally, however we expect to receive and distribute applications from our biggest SH Partners next week (Austria, Argentina and Chile) so you will soon begin to see more students in Regionally Available status. The application receipt deadline is October 28th, so we anticipate having all applications distributed by early November.
We are expecting applications from: Argentina, Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Germany, Iceland, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Paraguay and Switzerland. Overall, we have given out approximately 106 spots to Partners for the SH12 hosting cycle, which is a drastic decrease from the 160 students that participated on the SH11. As a reminder, we do not accept graduates on the SH hosting cycle, and all students are semester program applicants. The distribution process for SH12 will mirror that of last year's, in which applications will be released into Regionally Available status on a rolling basis as they are received and reviewed by staff. Volunteers may submit requests for holds, placed without papers, and school placed at any time, however in order to have a large pool of students to choose from to ensure the best possible family-student match, no requests to Community Place (CP) students will be accepted for the time being.
Finally, SH12 core participants will arrive on January 27th, which is two weeks later than last year. As you recall, for the first time ever AFS USA had to coordinate multiple arrivals for SH11 participants due to placement and compliance reasons. The decision to delay the arrival dates of SH12 participants was made in order to coordinate only one arrival date which will take place after the Department of State placement deadline (which is January 16th). YES students will arrive on the 25th of January, with onward travel to their host communities on the 28th.
SH12 Important Dates
- Oct 28, 2011: application receipt deadline for Partners
- Jan 16, 2012: DoS placement Deadline
- Jan 25, 2012: arrival of YES stus to DC
- Jan 27, 2012: arrival of core stus
- Jan 28, 2012: arrival of YES stus to hostfam
