AFS Intercultural Programs Avis 2

Our daughter had a dissapointing experinece with afs in Costa Rica: afs Switzerland obviously sending more kids than families available to Costa Rica so she ended up with a welcoming family: a couple both 26 years old with no kids but with important financial problems and job issues never really taking care of Talia especially disappointing for the first days as new students need some support and understanding. This family was oficially from july 25th until september 27th but after three weeks they kicked Talia out never giving any reason and Afs not giving any information.The only information we received was from our daughter via Whatsapp. She never had any problem of behaviour before reported very much the opposite. This new family was heavily related to the first ‘mother’ as the lady was welcome mum’s mum. So no real new beginning but a lot of chatting about her including a very poorly run afs office in San Jose forcing her to agree and sign ‘behaviourel rules and standards’ set by the host family while this family was obviously free to rather neglect her completely not even making any effort to talk to her including Spanish in the 4 weeks following. I herd the son of the family talking to her in english while we were facetiming.
Online AFS- website has as PR: ‘…learning a new language..’ and host families are not even motivated to talk a little spanish to our daughter ? We had the impression any family would be accepted even with very poor motivations. Our daughter ended up facing a real mercyless afs office in Costa Rica blaming her and same time not even reveiling to her what her host familys complaint was - zero transparency for her and zero information for us. Important issues like changing family were never reported to us much less anticipated and she was kicked out again four weeks later by host mum Nr 2 (mum of host mum Nr 1!). 0 information to our adress again. Kicked her out thursday she left friday for a new family - Nr 3 - and we had zero information my email from friday unanswered until I called afs Switzerland monday still with afs Costa Rica and AFS Switzerland silent.
No explication. In the meanwhile host family Nr 3 - who was not enrolled in any afs program - was the dream-come-true-host family (i had twice one hour facetime chats with her host mum and gist dad as I am fluent in Spanish so I can really give a personal impression) reporting Talia was a very kinds and lovely girl they would love to keep longer than the ten final days afs would give her in Costa Rica. Afs is a poorly run organisation taking a lot of money from often western families for zero support if anything should not work out and aFs Costa Rica is clearly protecting their locals making it especially difficult for the kids as they struggle with a not so nice family far from home beeing minors with a language they still have to learn and in our view most likely mafialike relationship from local hosts and local office workers that give zero comfort and understanding to the foreigner but lots of it to the local host family they might indirectly financially depend on. Never again. There are fortunately alternatives.

We had our 17 year old daughter on a year study program. Sufficient host families cannot be obtained but it seems like AFS send the student no matter what. The families you get have nothing to do with your application and your interests etc. - and you take families who do not have the necessary time to have an exchange student living. I could write a lot, but most important: I will not recommend AFS. My advice is to take a decision BEFORE the deposit is paid. It is approx. in May for departure in August. If a host family is not found here and it is not of good "quality" with a profile that reflects your application, exit the program here !!! Be critical and don't believe AFS promises that it will be a fantastic year for your child/young person.