National Council Communication - March 2011

From AFSWiki

While some of the goals of the National Council are one-time activities, there are other goals that focus on improvements in our core activities and processes and helping to meet some of our regular commitments. In the sending area, there are two goals for 2010-2011 that fall in this area:

• A specific goal of "Oversee the achievement of 2010-11 Sending and Hosting Goals"
• An ongoing goal of "Increasing sending participants"

The first is about helping to meet this years' goals, the second is about helping to make the changes necessary to improve in the future.

Why is this important?

Meeting our sending goals is important not only to AFS-USA, but because of the connected nature of the AFS network, any shortfall in sending in the US means that there is a hosting shortfall in our partner countries. So the financial health of both AFS-USA and our partners are dependent on meeting our goals. And, of course, we want to be able to give an exchange experience to as many students as possible as we are all aware of how much that experience can impact the lives of our participants.

There have been a number of changes in sending in this past year, one of which is the Sending Review Project which was discussed in our January newsletter article. A number of changes have also been implemented through the staff such as hiring seasonal staff to concentrate on directing leads to attend an Online Info Session, assigning application reviewers to specific countries and programs to gain efficiencies, etc.

But the greatest challenge is to try and engage our volunteers more directly in the delivery and support of our sending programs so that our sending participants can feel more connected by having volunteers who live in their area as their primary point of contact. This includes working directly with schools, following up with leads, mentoring students through the application process, etc.

What have we learned?

• Volunteers do want to be more engaged in supporting the delivery of our sending programs locally
• We need to have additional volunteers with a primary focus of sending
• There is great potential in engaging young AFS returnees to support sending activities
• We need to find ways to generate the same enthusiasm for our sending programs as for our hosting programs

Our summer departure sending programs will be closing later in March. So NOW is the time to focus our energies on them so that we can reach as many students as possible and have the opportunity to change their lives by participation in an exchange experience.

For questions regarding the sending goals of the National Council please contact Alan Russell at alan.russell@afsusa.org