Value Lens

From AFSWiki

AFS has a limited licensing agreement with the authors and owners of [Cultural Detective] that allows for the use of the Value Lens element of the Cultural Detective package for training and educational purposes within the AFS USA network. The Value Lenses are magnifying glasses symbolizing the way a culture looks at the world. Values Lenses contain the top five to seven core values of a given culture, those values that most influence behavior of members of that culture, particularly those that can get in the way of successful cross-cultural interaction.

Values Lenses are not meant to be distributed as handouts alone, but rather provided in the context of a training or orientation activity, or during a conversation with a host family, liaison, and/or participant. In any case, a discussion should take place about how the contents of the Lens can help better understand cultural differences and similarities between the home and host culture and their potential impact on the exchange experience.

To obtain Value Lenses for the US and other countries at no cost to you, please contact the following staff:

Training in the West	Jim Laden
Training Central States	Carolyn Rehn
Training in the East	Wendy Hyatt
Orientations	Robin Weber

Please allow at least three business days for your request to be processed.

Please note these materials are tightly copyrighted and part of our agreement is they will be used for internal use only. We must also track the numbers of copies made as this will have a direct impact on the cost of the license in 2009. Each time you place an order please specify the following information:

• Country
• Number of copies you will make
• Context in which the Value Lens will be used i.e. liaison training, host family orientation, support situation
• Date when Value Lens will be used

We are in the process of developing AFS-specific Cultural Detective Case Studies to accompany the materials, and have a few available for use in training and orientation. We will post additional resources on the Wiki as we develop them and we encourage you to post any activities or case studies that you create.

Return to Orientation
Return to Value Lens Post-Arrival Orientation Activity