A New Kind of Family Adventure

Seeking Farmington/Farmington Hills area Families to Welcome YFU Exchange Students!

Eighty Oakland County families (including 14 families in the Farmington/Farmington Hills Area) rolled out the welcome mat to YFU exchange students last year.  Your family could enjoy this very special opportunity for 2013-2014!

Youth for Understanding is a non-profit, volunteer-based organization which has been placing exchange students for 62 years.  Right now, YFU is looking for some welcoming families to host exchange students for the 2013-2014 school year.  Here are just a few of the teens coming to Oakland County in August.  Families provide a place to live (they can share a room) meals, plus encouragement, guidance, love and limits.  The students have their own health insurance and pay for their other expenses. The students live by your family’s rules and become a true family member sharing in the real life fun and responsibilities of the family. 

Hosting is for all kinds of families, from all ethnic and educational backgrounds and different family configurations with and without children at home. This includes singles, empty-nesters and retirees which all make great host parents. Elementary and middle school host siblings are among the greatest beneficiaries of the program.   

Why does my family host?  My husband and my two daughters and I love it. And it’s one of the best parenting decisions we’ve made. We wanted a way for our elementary-aged girls to experience cultures other than their own and to open their eyes to the world in a way that did not involve the television’s version of the world. We agreed to host an exchange student from Japan. Her name was Rie and she and my girls bonded very quickly. They were fascinated with her and enjoyed having a big sister who gave them lots of attention. She taught our family about her culture and she loved learning about American culture and was so very appreciative that we opened up our home to her. It was such a powerful and life-shaping experience that over the years we have since hosted Sarah and Melanie from France, Sofi from Argentina and are welcoming Cecilia from Denmark this year. We now have “daughters” in 4 different countries and my girls have “sisters” all over the world. It would have been so easy just to say no to hosting an exchange student, after all, we are all living very busy lives, but I can’t imagine not having these great girls in our lives now. Yes, it’s a leap of faith to bring a young teenager into your home, but just by adding another plate at the table, the rewards were so worth it and before we knew it, we couldn’t remember what it was like without them.

Here are just some of the kids headed to Oakland County who need host families to welcome them into their homes.  Maybe yours?

• Nis is a German boy who loves soccer and other sports.
• Antonio from Brazil is also an enthusiastic soccer player and guitar player.
• Anna from Poland is a small-town girl who enjoys winter sports and water sports with her family.
• Joon-Youb from Korea is a musician (guitar, tuba, trumpet, etc.) and has been a Catholic altar boy.
• Georg from Germany likes many recreational sports and hopes to become and English or history teacher.
  
• Nurten, a girl from Turkey, loves to dance and laugh.  She won a prestigious US scholarship to come and study in America
• PLUS more (from up to 60 countries)!

Call Lisa Hudgens at 248-347-8848, or lhudgens@yfu.org for information about hosting and for detailed profiles and letters of these boys and girls or to receive the list of other students available.  Interested families can also fill out an online application at www.yfu-usa.org.

American teens interested in becoming a YFU exchange student for a summer, semester, academic year, or gap year can also seek information on the website or by calling 1-800-TEENAGE