Volunteer Voices

It has been a tough year in Turkey, no need to sugar-coat it. When the AFS Volunteers organized the first Hakkari - Izmir Local Exchange in 2015, we were talking of peace throughout the country. Things were getting better; things were going to be much much better. We were going to laugh together, sing together, dance together. Then it didn't happen... Then bombs started exploding. Then people started dying in hundreds...

Homophobia and transphobia – fears that turn into hate. Unfortunately, we still live in a world where these two are present. But what does that have to do with AFS? Today is IDAHOT - the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. An important date to remember that in many places in the world, LGBT youth still face exclusion and discrimination in our society. We believe that AFS can play an important...

This story starts somewhere in Izmir, Turkey with a group of dedicated AFS volunteers and takes us to Faro in Portugal. It reminds us of what the AFS mission is all about. Cultural differences within a country can sometimes be even bigger than those across continents. At AFS, we are very good at creating bridges between different nations. However, we rarely focus on the diversity within nations. This has recently changed...

As an AFS volunteer and returnee I often find it challenging to explain to outsiders what we do. From the simplest explanation about our school programs to a long discussion about our volunteer development strategies, I have always found it difficult to explain impact of our work to those outside the AFS network. The dynamic of ...

Food. Flights. Reduce. Paper. Plastic. Waste. Recycle. Reuse. Materials. Alternatives. Information. Awareness. Promotion. Actions. Sustainability. These are some of the keywords from the discussion that we, the volunteers of AFS, are currently having about how we can make AFS a more sustainable organization. When I heard there w...

Humankind has always imagined the future. We imagined a more secure cave as a shelter. We imagined more food, a warmer home. We imagined vehicles that go on their own and to fly. As we approached the 21st century, we imagined trips to Mars, colonies in space, time machines. We imagined Back to the Future’s and Jetsons...

At the beginning of November, we have shared with you a powerful story from Turkey about the project in Hakkâri who won the 2015 ChangeMaker Award for Organizational Innovation. This is how the story continues. It is almost the end of the year. Unlike the rest of the country and much of Europe that still enjoys spri...

Today is the International Day of Migrants, which gives us an opportunity to reflect on what Intercultural Dialogue and Peace mean in a world with 232 million migrants. Within that huge group, the notions of Peace and ICL seem even more relevant to the around 60 million forcibly displaced people (refugees and internally displace...

Take a breath and imagine a community that embraces intercultural learning and wants to make a positive impact in the world. A community that values respect for differences, using the most powerful tool of giving people a chance to live the intercultural experience themselves and thus, create a change in their lives. As AFS Turk...

Is blogging the right tool for us volunteers to contribute to this organization? What potential does blogging have? These kind of questions have been on our minds when we started this blog about a month ago. When we met during an AFS training, we asked Daniel Eckhart, community manager at the international reinsurance company Sw...

This week we would like to share with you an amazing volunteer experience from Mendoza, Argentina. Rocío Bonadé writes about her experience of organizing a local Youth Forum on how to foster Peace in the local community. Inspired by the 100 Years Young Youth Symposium that happened last year during the Centennial C...

The following experience from Turkey is by far not the usual volunteer work. Yet we believe it is a great example of what AFS can be if we work hard and are courageous. It’s another AFS weekend and this one starts at 4 a.m. on a Friday. Our flights are at 6.30, one of us leaving from Istanbul, the other from Izmir. Get up,...

It’s coming out day and in AFS we are celebrating! As AFS volunteers we are proud of the diversity within our ranks but we still struggle to openly show pride of our many queer AFS friends. But today, whether we are lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual or just an ally, today is the day to be proud of who we are and to openl...

Do you know this feeling that you should “say something”, “do something” but you don’t really know how or what? Well, we often have that. And we believe that although AFS is a non­political organization, as AFSers we should take a stand for what we believe in. Countries endangered of disappearin...

The idea of AFS Switzerland’s “Strategy Engagement” meeting was to engage volunteers with the strategy for the upcoming years. What really happened was a lesson on horizontal collaboration. When I was invited together with other key volunteers to join a workshop with the aim to give feedback and engage w...

Not that peace is not relevant in 2015, not at all. But peace is so hard to grasp. We do not live in a bi-polar world like 100 years ago when AFS was created. Our world is complex and the issue we face manyfold. That is why back at the Youth Forum in Argentina, a group of volunteers gathered around the idea of “social impa...