Team Overview

Welcome to the Downeast Maine AFS Area Team

Welcome to the Downeast Maine AFS Area Team. Our team has a longstanding, successful history of placing students from around the world with families throughout our region. The Downeast team is comprised of both experienced and new volunteers. Each of our vounteers offer a unique perspective on the hosting experience. Some volunteers have been former AFS students themselves and others got involved to experience the enjoyment of learning about other cultures and sharing their own cultural perspective. Our team is also active in assisting American students that are interested in going abroad as exchange students. We would love to include more individuals to our growing team of volunteers!

Where are we Located?

The Downeast Maine Area Team is a geographically large team. It encompasses the Ellsworth/Bar Harbor region, Central and Coastal Maine, Western Maine’s Oxford Hills region and Sebago Lakes area all the way down to the southernmost region of Maine. Local volunteers live in each of the areas to offer support, guidance and leadership.

How are we Doing?

The upcoming school year promises to be an exciting and busy year for our students, families and volunteers! Thanks to all the hard work and dedication of our volunteers we have successfully placed students from around the globe in the Downeast Maine Area team.

Open Volunteer Positions

If you are interested in volunteering with AFS, but are unsure about what opportunities are available, please select a link below to read about some of the position descriptions below to see what may interest you and your family.

HOSTING VOLUNTEER

The Hosting Volunteer serves as the fundamental local AFS hosting representative. This role is responsible for host family recruitment in a defined area, ensuring contact is maintained with prospective host families, and coordinating the initiation of their application process. Community outreach is an objective for this position in supporting Host Family Lead generation.

HOST FAMILY INTERVIEWER

A Hosting Interviewer determines a host family’s appropriateness to host and evaluates whether the family is likely to have a successful hosting experience by meeting with all family members who will be living at home with the exchange student. If a family is found suitable to host and who chooses to host, the Hosting Interviewer must submit a written interview Form D for that family to their regional AFS office as part of the host family application required by the U.S. State Department

HOSTING LEAD RECIPIENT

A Hosting Lead Recipient receives automatic email notifications when a hosting interest form is completed on the AFS-USA website by an interested person in the Hosting Lead Recipient’s designated area (Chapter or Team). The Hosting Lead Recipient is responsible for ensuring that the lead is contacted by an AFS volunteer within five days and for relaying information about that contact to the regional hosting staff and appropriate hosting volunteers.

PARTICIPANT / FAMILY LIAISON

Although support for AFS participants is provided through several local volunteers as well as regional and national offices, the AFS Liaison is a volunteer identified as the primary contact for an AFS participant for the duration of their program. As such, the Liaison has a role that is extremely important in maintaining the communication link between an AFS participant and the AFS organization.
Liaisons are key to the success of the AFS support network by providing ongoing community friendship and support for AFS students and their host families. The Liaison serves as the “first responder” in the communication network connecting with the local AFS volunteer leadership and staff as needed to provide participant support. The most important attributes for a Liaison to possess are:
1. a genuine regard for people of all ages
2. the ability to listen and to be objective
3. the desire to learn about other cultures.
The liaison is not responsible for solving problems or resolving conflicts for participants and families, but rather to provide support for them so that they can do so themselves.

All Scholarships

Returnees

Welcome Back Returnees!

Whether your history with AFS dates back decades or just a few months, we’re glad to have you visit our website and reconnect with AFS. As someone who has been involved with AFS, you understand the special relationship that can exist when people work together to create a more just and peaceful world. You also know how one person can, and does, make a great difference.

Throughout the years, AFS sees returnees who later send or host students of their own, former host parents who return to hosting after their children have grown, and former employees who want to volunteer. Of course, if you are a volunteer who has moved and wants to reconnect in your new community, we want to help! AFS takes great pride in knowing that once an individual is involved with AFS, they tend to be involved again in some way.

Reconnect with AFS

Keeping in touch and involved with AFS is a great way for you to make new friends and continue the intercultural learning experiences that began with your AFS exchange abroad. Your involvement also helps to further the AFS mission of creating a more just and peaceful world. You’ve experienced how one person can make a difference!

Photos

Pine Tree Maine Area Team