By Tara Hofmann, President & CEO, AFS-USA
In a time of growing division and uncertainty, the work of building understanding across cultures and communities can feel like swimming upstream. But I’m convinced—perhaps more than ever—that what we do through international exchange isn’t just meaningful. It’s necessary.
Each year, AFS-USA brings hundreds of high school exchange students from around the world to live with American families and attend local schools in communities big and small. These aren’t policy initiatives or political programs. These are people-to-people experiences. A teenager from Indonesia joins the marching band in Missouri. A young woman from Germany debates in a civics class in Arizona. A family in Michigan learns to cook Brazilian feijoada.
It’s in these quiet, unheralded moments that the world gets a little smaller and a little kinder.
Too often, discussions about exchange focus on economic impact or foreign policy return on investment. And while those outcomes are real, they’re not the heart of the story. The real impact is in the relationships formed—between students and host siblings, teachers and volunteers, neighbors and new friends. It’s in the ways these encounters change how we see each other—and how we see ourselves.
Volunteerism is the backbone of this work. Our host families, local representatives, and community leaders step up not because they have to, but because they believe in young people and in a more connected world. In a moment when public trust feels frayed, their quiet, consistent commitment is a profound source of reassurance and hope.
We don’t often call this diplomacy. But it is.
I believe the most powerful ambassadors are not the ones who stand behind podiums but the ones who sit across from each other at dinner tables. They are the students who return home with broader perspectives and deeper compassion. They are the American families who open their homes and, in doing so, open their hearts to a world they may never have otherwise known.
In these challenging times, I think we all long for voices of reason—voices that remind us we are still capable of empathy, connection, and community. Student exchange does that. Not with sweeping proclamations or political fanfare, but with daily, personal acts of understanding.
So yes, what we do matters. What you do matters.
And perhaps, in moments like this, it matters most of all.