The AFS Exchange
In each episode of The AFS Exchange, we sit down with AFS-USA host families, students, volunteers, and educators to hear about the profound impact of their AFS experiences. Join us as we explore the knowledge and skills needed to help create a more just and peaceful world.
As a non-profit organization, AFS-USA has been empowering people to become globally engaged citizens for over 75 years. With programs in 45+ countries and hosting students from 90+ countries, AFS-USA has been creating life-changing intercultural experiences for generations.
The AFS Exchange
Inside the AFS Engine Room
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Welcome back for Season 6! We are spending the first few episodes of this season highlighting the people who keep the AFS engine running: our incredible volunteers.
In this premiere episode, we’re heading to Spain to follow two AFS-USA volunteers who attended the 2025 International Volunteer Summit in Málaga, Spain. We’ll hear about their unique backgrounds, the challenges of leading teams in the US, and how stepping out of their "local silos" to meet global counterparts changed their perspective on our mission.
Why listen if you aren't a volunteer? Because these stories are a masterclass in human connection. It’s about what happens when people caught up in the daily grind of a local mission look up and realize they are part of a global movement. It’s a reminder that no matter where we are, we are all working toward the same common goal.
Meet the Guests:
- Abdullah: Originally from Jordan, his first experience with AFS was as an exchange student placed in Kansas City in the mid 2010s. Now an active volunteer, he’s held leadership roles in Minneapolis and is currently helping drive the mission in Orange County, California.
- Ashe: Representing a 50-year AFS family legacy in Iowa, Ashe is a "legacy volunteer" who wears many hats- from School Outreach to hosting her second exchange student this year.
In this episode, we explore:
- The "Engine Room" of AFS and the people behind the student experience.
- The struggle of operating in a "volunteer silo" and the cure for burnout.
- The impact of the first-ever Chapter Leadership Summit in Spain.
- How sharing ideas across borders reinvigorates local teams.
More from AFS-USA: 🏠Host a Student | ✈️Study Abroad | 🤝Volunteer | 🏫For Educators | 📧Contact the Show | 🎧Collections
Kate
Hello and welcome to The AFS Exchange. I'm Kate Mulvihill. On this podcast, we share real stories from the AFS community. We're here to explore how exchange programs change lives, one conversation at a time.
[Music]
Kate
Welcome back for Season 6! I hope you all had a relaxing holiday season… or a super busy one, if that’s what you like. I was in Oklahoma, then New York State, then Nevada… and I am very happy now to be back in the little podcasting corner of my apartment.
While the show was on break, something exciting happened in the AFS world. This past November, over 100 dedicated AFS volunteers from 29 countries gathered in the south of Spain. They were in a little town called Mollina, which is outside Malaga. Why? It was for the first-ever AFS Chapter Leadership Summit.
You know, we often focus on the student experience and host family experience on this show, but today, we’re stepping into the "engine room" of AFS to talk to the people who make these life-changing exchanges possible: the volunteers. And for this first episode of Season 6, I’m joined by two of them:
Abdullah, originally from Jordan, began his AFS journey as an exchange student in Kansas City ten years ago. Since returning to the US for university, he has jumped into leadership roles in both Minneapolis and Orange County.
Ashe, from Iowa, represents the third generation of a 50-year AFS legacy in her family. She wears many volunteer hats for her team and she and her husband are currently hosting their second exchange student.
Now, if you’re already an AFS volunteer, you know that while there are national conferences and big-picture opportunities, the day-to-day work can often feel like you’re operating in a silo in your own small corner of the country. And while we send and receive students from all over the world, we rarely get a chance to see how our counterparts across the globe are actually doing the work.
But if you’ve never volunteered with AFS a day in your life, you might be wondering: “Why does a volunteer leadership summit in Spain matter to me?” It matters because these stories are great examples of human connection. It’s about what happens when people who are caught up in the daily grind of a local mission look up and realize they are part of something bigger. It’s about how sharing ideas across borders can be both invigorating and heartwarming- showing that no matter where we are, we are all working toward the same common goal.
This episode will be one of two based around the Chapter Leadership Summit. To give us an even broader view, we’ll be hearing from another summit attendee next month: Alessandro from Italy. Alessandro was an AFS participant in Norway and now is a volunteer leader in Sicily. We had a great conversation about the volunteer structure in Italy, American pop culture, and his experience at the Summit.
But for today… let’s hear from Ashe and Abdullah.
[Music]
Kate
Okay, welcome. Could you both please introduce yourselves and tell me a little bit about your background with AFS?
Abdullah
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Hi Kate, thanks for having us today. My name is Abdullah. I am originally from Jordan. I came to the US when I was 16 as an exchange student. I lived in Kansas City with an amazing host family.
After my exchange, I went back home to Jordan. I completed my senior year, and then I just love the US too much that I decided to come back for college. So I went to the University of Rochester in upstate New York, where I completed both my bachelor's and master's. And after I graduated, I moved to Minneapolis, and I had so much free time as an adult working full time right after graduation, so I was like, I need to do something with my free time. I decided to, you know, apply to become a volunteer with AFS, because it just meant so much to me when I was 16, and that's kind of how I began my volunteer journey with AFS.
Ashe
My name is Ashe Purscell. I am originally from Wisconsin, where my family started volunteering with AFS 50 years ago. In 2025 I've been a host sibling to three, a host mom to 2, 39, students total. I've been a volunteer... I've been a volunteer since 2022. A liaison for 4 kids. I'm currently the Volunteer Engagement Coordinator, the Sponsored Programs Coordinator, and I'm a part of the Volunteer Engagement Advisory Group, which is a National Council for Volunteer Engagement to how can we help volunteers be the best they can be.
Kate
Great. Well, thank you both. Abdullah, so you were a volunteer in Minneapolis, and now you're a volunteer in California. You know you can answer this question talking about either team or both, but can you describe the area team that you volunteer with?
Abdullah
Yeah, absolutely. I think I haven't been living in California long enough to be able to describe what the area team is like, so I can give you a little bit of a glimpse of what that's like. But I'd like to first talk about the Minneapolis area team. So I was volunteering with Minneapolis for two years, and it's a pretty small team for a pretty big area, I would say. And the state is split in, like, a really weird way, where, like, because the Twin Cities, you know, they're right next to each other, but like Minneapolis, and anything west of Minneapolis is an area team, and then Saint Paul, and anything east of St Paul, including parts of Wisconsin, are also an area team. So like, even though we're right next to each other, we're like two area teams with two distinct, you know, members and things like this.
And I would say there was a pretty big range of age groups in terms of the volunteers. And I think I would say I was one of the, you know, the younger ones. When I joined I was like, 23 years old, so I came in with a lot of energy and a lot of like, oh, we needed this. We need to do that.
So it was pretty great. I remember, like, signing up, like, right around, like, the September timeframe, and so they were just having their. Post departure orientation. And then the area team chair invited me to come. And she was like, You should come, like, it'll this will be like, a good opportunity to meet the rest of the volunteers and the exchange kids. And so they had done, they had just done their arrivals orientation. And so I went, and it turns out to be like at a cabin. And so for me, it was like a really, it was a full circle moment, because when I came to the US in 2016 my post arrival orientation was at a, it was an overnight at a cabin to where we, you know, we got to spend the night, and we had, you know, the bonfire, all those good stuff.
And it was, yeah, like I said, it was a full circle moment. I really, really liked it. And so from that moment on, I actually took the role of orientation coordinator, and I that's basically what I've done for Minneapolis for two years. I, you know, took care of all the orientation logistics.
I even at one point planned a joint post departure orientation with the St Paul team, or we used to call them East Metro. And so we've had, I would say, like, over 30 kids at one, you know, in one place, and it was so much fun.
And then I moved to South OC, South Orange County, and I actually just had a kind of like a holiday lunch with the team. And it's a much smaller team, for sure, and we only have one student hosted this year in all of Orange County, which is crazy to me that we only have one exchange student in my area team, and I think it's just, you know, a lot of things let you know to this decline in in hosting students. And so we're trying to go around. We're trying to go and, like, find some solutions to try and get more schools you know, find more host families. So I'm bringing a lot of energy.
And I also just had this summit in Spain with Ashe that was all about volunteer engagement. So I also volunteered to become the volunteer engagement coordinator for that team. So I can just kind of, like, implement a lot of these ideas that we just brought back from Spain. So I haven't been with the South OC team for a long time. I'm just getting to know them and getting to know, you know, their strengths and weaknesses, and I'm excited to see what, what more we can do to try and kind of like, revive this area team.
Kate
That's great. Thank you. You know, I have a couple things to say before I'd love to hear from Ashe, the one student in Orange County. I know that's been a small team for a while, but are you guys able to do things with greater LA and San Diego?
Abdullah
So the issue is, we are, I, well, I know they are, and I know we're trying, at least for like orientations. We're trying to bring that one student down to like, at least, you know, see the students from San Diego, but it is a pretty, pretty big like, geographical area, right? So, like, even though we're in OC, like, that student is like, 45 minutes away from me, because just OC is really large, and she's actually closer to LA County than she is to, like, where the rest of the volunteers are in OC.
I know there are trying their best with at least, like, making sure that she gets to see other exchange students with AFS while she's here. So we're going to try and go and bring her down to San Diego for the mid year orientation, just so she can at least see some of the exchange students down there, because they have a much bigger team than we do in OC.
Kate
And you know, as we all know, students cannot choose where they get placed. You know, it's too bad that she's the only kiddo in the team, but she's also in Orange County. It’s pretty nice.
Abdullah
She's in a really nice part of the United States, and I can tell you that.
Kate
Okay, well, great. Thank you, Abdullah. Ashe, I guess same question for you. Can you talk a little bit about the area team you volunteer with?
Ashe
I volunteer with Midland Central, which takes up the majority of Iowa.
Kate
Yeah, okay. And what are some of the things that you know you and your team get excited about each year? Are there events, orientations? What kind of invigorates you in Midland Central?
Ashe
Some things we're always really excited for is the first orientation. It's we usually do, like a this year we did a slumber party, which was a lot of fun. We don't have as many students this year, so we've been able to do a little bit more. But the post arrival orientation is everybody absolutely goes nuts for this one.
The last couple of years, we've all slept over at a volunteer's house who has a swimming pool, and everybody makes s'mores, and it's a big sleepover in her basement and living room and dining room, and the kids just have an absolute blast with it, and so do the volunteers, because once everything's kind of settled down after, you know, all of our classes and things like that, we all get to sit down and talk to each other and just have a really nice time. So it's a really nice blending of volunteer engagement and student engagement that I really enjoy with that.
The other big one is our holiday party, which we just did a couple weeks ago. It is a tradition at this point. We go to our stunning state capital, and we actually have a new volunteer this year who is a former employee of the state capital. So he gave us a tour that year, which was really exciting. And then we walk over to our local Chris Kendall market. Then we will all drive over to a volunteer's house, and we have a party with sweets from everyone, and we make ornaments for the host families and thank you cards and play silly games like the saran wrap ball, a classic favorite of mine. And the kids have no idea what's happening, but they really enjoy it, and they really love it once they start getting into it.
One big thing that we're really excited for this year is we are bringing back the cultural potluck. So the plan is for the kids to have little, short presentations about their home country and then their everybody's going to bring a food. We are also opening this event up to everybody, not just volunteers and students and host families. Anybody and everybody can come. And we're really excited for the reach that this event has the potential to have
Kate M
Nice! So Abdullah talked a little bit about some of the challenges that his team, now in Orange County, faces. Ashe, what are some challenges that your team faces locally?
Ashe
Some challenges that we face locally are getting a wider range of our volunteers to come to events, and it can be tricky. We are a little bit more spread out. So for example, if we have a volunteer in this one city and we don't place a student there that year. They don't really have as much to do, and we risk losing touch with them.
We're also decently spread out, so it can be really hard for us to get together as a team. We have some volunteers that are. You know, we live five minutes away from each other all the way to two, two and a half hours away from each other by car.
But we really do try to have a couple events a year where we really do get everyone together, and we as a team, try to go visit those kids. We have a little tiny section of our team based in Forest City, Iowa that is kind of right near the Minnesota border. This team has been going on since the 1960s because of our dear Eunice Klaus, who was just such an amazing person and so dedicated to AFS. And they have such a strong chapter there that we try to get all of the other Iowa kids to go up there and visit every year for they host an AFS fundraiser carnival every year. So we always try to go visit them. But it is a challenge. I mean, with snow, weather, all kinds of things, just keeping in touch can be really tricky.
Kate
That makes sense, absolutely.
[Music]
Kate
So, we’ve set the stage: Ashe in Iowa, and Abdullah now in Southern California. The two of them are both dedicated to the health of their local teams, and by extension, the health of the organization as a whole.
So, let’s find out more about this Summit. Was this just a vacation to the south of Spain for AFS volunteers? Beaches and sunbathing and all the tapas you can eat? Hmm… not exactly. To understand the goals of the event and how this group was chosen, let’s hear from one of the people who helped select the attendees from the US. Michelle Bird is the Manager of Stakeholder Experience in the Stakeholder Engagement Department at AFS-USA.
Michelle Bird
The inaugural AFS Chapter Leadership Summit was held in Malaga, Spain in November 2025.
AFS International partnered with AFS Spain to host the first global volunteer event focused on strengthening our local impact.
Over 100 volunteers from 29 AFS partner countries attended, focusing on core principles in leadership development and building sustainable local teams.
The AFS-USA Board of Trustees agreed to cover the attendance fee for 10 of our volunteers. So volunteers were invited to apply to attend, answering prompts about their involvement as leaders on the local level, what they believed they could gain from the experience and how they foresaw utilizing their newly gained skills in their teams at home.
We wanted to select volunteers who had already shown an interest in leadership and also showed an interest in developing more leadership skills that could help to strengthen their team locally. And of course, we wanted to have diversity amongst the volunteers who attended so that we could accurately represent just how diverse our volunteers are.
Kate
Abdullah, I would like to start with you. Why was attending this so important to you and your Minneapolis team, your OC team right now?
Abdullah
So that's a really good question. I had attended a few conferences and Summits with AFS USA.
And so while those were amazing opportunities to kind of connect with fellow volunteers and kind of like hear from AFS staff within the US, I noticed that sometimes we lack training on volunteer engagement.
And so this summit in Spain was all about volunteer engagement.
I think right after COVID, when you know everyone was just staying at home, it really was hard to kind of like, get out of that bubble, right? Like you were spending two years at home, you're spending two years social distancing from one another, and so going back to what was normal before was really hard. And so one of the things that I noticed when I was in charge of orientations in Minneapolis was how hard it is to get volunteers to come out and help out with some sorts of things.
So such as helping me out with content, or, like helping me out with, you know, taking care of logistics for an orientation. And so I noticed that there was a need for just making a difference in that department, right?
And so I get an email about this amazing summit in Spain that's all about volunteer engagement.
And I noticed that it was also going to have a lot of different AFS partner countries.
And that's really why I wanted to go, because it was mostly focused on volunteer engagement. And I wanted to figure out ways where, you know, how do people, how do volunteers in different countries, like, recruit their volunteers? How do they keep them engaged? How do they keep them, like, excited about, you know, just pushing the AFS effect, right?
Kate
Absolutely. Well, thank you. And right, if you wrote your application based on Minneapolis, and perhaps the struggles that Minneapolis was facing. You know, some of those probably overlap with Orange County. And, you know, you could pass these lessons along. It's not like apples and oranges, right? So it's still applicable.
Yeah, so Ashe how about you? Why was this so important to you and your team right now?
Ashe
It was so important to me personally, because the pandemic really did kind of screw with a lot of my young adult travel plans. I'm not going to lie, so there was a little bit of a personal drive to go out and meet people and see new things.
I wanted to grow personally for myself and for AFS Midland Central and AFS USA. I wanted to be able to learn more and provide more for my team.
I wanted to represent Iowa as something a little bit more. We're super cool. We're super pretty. Yes, we still have a lot of corn, and that stereotype is very true.
But we really wanted to learn more about where, where are our students coming from? Where are we sending the few kids we do send, where are they going to and on that mark, what is their sending structure like? How are they getting so many kids? How can we encourage more kids to go?
You know I meet a lot of the kids here that my exchange students were friends with, and they say, Well, what do you mean? We could go abroad? I didn't know that was an option. I thought we just took kids in. I didn't know we could go to other places. And so kind of the goal is to then bring that awareness back to Iowa and the US, but really I just wanted to be a sponge. Take in absolutely everything I could about how they do volunteer engagement. What are their orientations like? How did other people get involved with AFS? How are they utilizing young volunteers?
Kate
So Abdullah is looking for ways to re-engage a post-COVID community, and Ashe wants to peel back the layers on how our global partners actually operate and how to inspire the next generation of volunteers.
They arrived in Spain to a packed agenda organized by AFS International and AFS Spain. Some topics included defining your "why," identifying your personal purpose within AFS, and mapping out the volunteer journey.
Because, well, volunteer recruitment, and onboarding, needs to be intentional.
You know, once someone joins your team as a volunteer… then what? What is the path like for a new volunteer?
It’s like starting at a new job, perhaps someone in HR gives you a manual, you do some trainings, and then your boss just tells you to sit at your desk until they need you. You want to learn, get involved, and do more than just doodle on the back of your manual. But no one comes by, until weeks, months later, a coworker runs up to you, dumps a bunch of files on your desk, yells “take these I have too many!” then runs away.
That’s exactly what the Summit was designed to prevent. Ashe and Abdullah spent their days examining the health of their own teams- identifying what’s working, what are some goals they want to hit this year, and, perhaps most importantly, what their team needs to let go of to move forward.
But AFS is a massive global network, and what works in Iowa might be logistically impossible in a city in, say, Japan. As they sat down with representatives from 29 different countries, one realization stood out above everything else: while the mission is the same, the demographics and the application processes look very different depending on where you are in the world.
Abdullah
You know, like in different countries, you have volunteers that are so engaged and are just like so much younger, and they're leading their chapters at like 19 years old. And, you know, there are other countries that have a whole different selection process for their volunteers, where they don't really take on everyone. They have to go through like a process, as if you're applying for a new job. It was so interesting to go through some of those things. And also, like the topics that, you know, AFS Intercultural Programs have, you know, kind of like prepared for us throughout that three day weekend. Those were just really, really interesting.
Kate
Great. I'm interested to hear some of these volunteer like the application process. What's that like?
Abdullah
So, like, I know, in the US, you submit an application, and so some of the volunteers in that area, team where you submit an application, will get an email and you just, it's more of just a conversation, right? It's like, what do you want to do? Why do you want to be a volunteer? And you obviously have to go through some steps, like a background check, some training, activities.
But I know, like, for example, there was this one guy who was in a lot of my sessions, who was from Brazil, and he talked about, like, how in Brazil, they have a whole selection process, and not everyone who applies to be a volunteer gets to be a volunteer. And you know, the interesting thing about AFS volunteers, and I'll say 80% or maybe 90% of them, had some sort of connection to AFS, whether, you know they, you know, whether they had hosted siblings, or whether themselves went on exchange, you know what I mean. But I've also noticed people that just volunteered out of you know, they just came across the website out of nowhere, and they were like, this is cool to me. I'm going to volunteer, even though I've never interacted with AFS before. And so this guy from Brazil was one of those people he had never, you know, been on an AFS program. He had never hosted. He had never been, I guess, he had never engaged with AFS before, before, just randomly, you know, stumbling upon it one time.
And so he talked to us about how in Brazil, people have to submit applications, and there's a whole committee that, like, reviews the application and invites them over for like, an interview, and they really want to understand why someone wants to be a volunteer. And from there, they only send invites out to like, specific people, which I just thought was mind blowing.
Ashe
That really surprised me as well, when I heard that from Brazil. I was like, wow, it was just so different from the way we do things and how some of the other countries do things.
Abdullah
And then you have other countries, like Portugal, for example, there was this one Portuguese girl who was president of her chapter, and she was in college still, which was crazy to me
She talked to us about how as soon as people come back from exchange, they have a special orientation for them. I forget the exact name, but it's basically an orientation where it's just setting up those returnees to become volunteers, which is something that we don't really have in the US, which I also thought was very interesting.
And maybe it's not super applicable, because the US is just a huge country where, like, even if we do send high school students abroad, when they come back, they're probably going to have, college applications, and they might even move out for college, so, like, an entirely new state, right? Whereas, like in a lot of those smaller countries, people would like, typically go to college within the same city, or maybe, like a nearby city or something.
So this was just, again, like an interesting thing to hear from that girl in Portugal.
Ashe
Another country that has a really unique setup is Japan. I got to listen to the AFS Japan president a few years ago in Ohio. And it's required that the Japanese returnees, at least at the time, it was required that the Japanese returnees be a volunteer for two years, like the kids that came back. So I think that's really interesting, too.
Kate
Yeah, that's and, you know, that's obviously returnees here are encouraged to be volunteers, and their parents are encouraged to also be involved or host, but there isn't that sort of orientation, like in Portugal or like in Japan, like a requirement. I do think that what you said Abdullah is definitely, not only is the US big, it's big, but the fact that kids do move right? You go on exchange, you come back. You have a year, two years left in your hometown, and then you may be on the other side of the country. So even if you do volunteer for a year or two, then you go the other side of the country, you start college. You get kind of pulled into college life. Whereas I think in a lot of other parts of the world, folks stay more local.
Kate
Let's see. I mean, you had the opportunity to connect with folks from all over the world, and you've talked about a couple different people, a couple different partner countries. Were there any surprising, memorable, funny interactions you had with folks from different parts of the world?
Ashe
I've got a good one.
Abdullah
Floor is yours!
Ashe
So I made, I want to first say I made so many amazing connections with so many wonderful people all over the world. And if I could name drop all of them, I would, but there are a couple that just really stand out to me. So me, personally, I am a huge fan of Eurovision, which is a like a European Song Contest and one of my favorite songs last year was from Portugal.
And AFS Portugal found that so funny and so amusing that we all went to a little karaoke bar about a kilometer or so away from where we were staying, and it was karaoke night, and we all got to sing the Portuguese. We all got to sing the Portuguese song from Eurovision in a Spanish bar, and they were so excited about it and so inclusive. And it was absolutely the funniest thing to now be able to say that I sang Portuguese in a tiny little Spanish bar in the middle of a one roundabout town in Spain. And I think that's so it's so AFS to be able to say that and do that.
And then I also met Alessandro from Italy. He went abroad, and his host sister was actually hosted in Iowa with my Area Team. And I think that's so I think it's so funny. It's so small world AFS of that is crazy, and I know exactly who her host family is, what school she went to. I'm good friends with her liaison. It's just so funny that something like that happened being from Iowa, and he being from Sicily, going and studying abroad, and then his host sister came here like that's so, again, AFS effect, AFS random.
Abdullah
It's a small world. I mean, it is such. I remember talking to you about one of the liaisons in the network. Her name was Carmen. She's amazing. She was in Kansas City, she moved to Iowa and was a volunteer there. And so I had been talking to Ashe about her, and she was like, yeah, she volunteered with us, like, in the Des Moines area before moving back to Kansas City again. And I was like, yeah, she was my liaison. Like, how small was that world?
And, I mean, they talked about that all the time at the conference, how, like, sometimes, you know, you might be, like, in this random place, and you know you're, I don't know, you have a backpack on and you have an AFS pin on, and then someone comes up to you and are like “I did AFS too!” It’s just, it’s crazy.
Ashe
And that's how they found our keynote speaker too. Dr. Famida, just being at a conference and saying, “Oh, who knows what AFS is?” And this astounding woman went to the US in 1966 to 1967 from India. And now she has a doctorate.
Abdullah
She teaches at UPenn. She, like, presented amazing research on just like volunteering in general, and like, why people volunteer and like, she just, like, was able to quantify a lot of things in ways that I had never even thought about. And I definitely, definitely, definitely enjoyed those presentations that she had shared. It was just so eye opening, just the ways she thinks about things and researches things that people just never really think about, right? Like you just, you're always just like, Oh, I'm volunteering just because it's fun or, you know, whatnot. But it's like, there's so much more to it than what people think volunteering is. And she was able to present those, like, really beautifully.
Ashe
The single most actionable idea that I would like to bring back to the chapter is remembering that the most important things are events. Meetings can be kind of scary or just sound boring. My chapter had already started doing more quarterly volunteer fun events like going to bingo or trivia or mini golfing or doing these kind of very low cost to entry things as a group. And I think that is one of the biggest things I will bring back, is that what I'm doing and what we're doing as a team is the right track, even though it may not seem like it, we have to keep doing it. We have to keep it up, because it will only help our bond as volunteers grow stronger. And I know you said one thing, but I do have a second thing.
Kate
Yeah go for it, go for it.
Ashe
Being able to understand each other's “why.” We called it ikigai. It's a Japanese term of, what's your reason why? Why are we doing this? What do we want to get out of it? And how can I, as a volunteer engagement coordinator, help amplify someone's why and help give them more and provide them what they need. And how can we as a team find our why and our common goal and amplify it.
Kate
And what is your “why," Ashe?
Ashe
My “why” is just an onion of layers of going back to when I was really little, my grandma volunteered, and my mom volunteered.
We just did it. You know, this is what we could do to promote peace in the world, and if we have the option to do it, we should be helping others. I want to help these kids. I want to see them make a difference in the world. I want to be able to support them, and I want to be able to support my other volunteers, so that way we can keep doing this for a very, very long time and see all of these kids grow and blossom and have more understanding and sympathy and empathy for each other. AFS is a really beautiful thing, and I want to keep supporting in any way I can.
Kate
That's a great why.
Abdullah
That’s a beautiful answer. I think just hearing Ashe speak about, you know, the actual items that she is bringing back to her team just made me just remember a lot of things that have stuck with me since the summit. And I think one of them is just like making the volunteer, you know, just making the act of volunteering a little bit more fun for the volunteers themselves.
We don't want this to become a chore, where you know you're just volunteering and just like doing things to get them done because you think you have to.
And so I've seen a lot of people, I've met a lot of people in that summit that had a lot of amazing ideas in into how they try to, you know, make volunteering fun, whether it's just doing events and activities focused primarily for the volunteers, whether it's just, you know, like happy hours For the volunteers, or just special fun events for the volunteers. And I think we don't do enough of that in the US. We don't really connect enough with our volunteer network, like outside of conferences and things like this.
Sometimes it's just like, we need to take a step back and just make sure that we're also like taking care of ourselves, right? While we're volunteering, we to make sure that we're also like enjoying this process, because I think one can only take so much on top of their like, you know, normal day to day job and, you know, personal life before something bottles up way too much that it's just like, Okay, I can't really do this anymore. I'm just going to go quit, right?
So we need to make sure that this is just fun for everyone. Whether it be through activities just for us, or orientations for the new volunteers, or just taking them out for coffee, just chatting about, like, different things that are not related to AFS. I think that's one of the actionable items that I would like to bring back to my area team.
Kate
Okay, is there anything else that either of you would like to add about yourself, your time in Spain, life?
Ashe
I'll say this, take the leap. If you feel that maybe you could be doing more in AFS, offer it. Offer your help. Everything we do is for a reason. If you've felt tentative or afraid to go to meetings or events, just go give it a shot. Give it a try, because you will get more out of being an AFS volunteer, the more you put into it, as long as you make sure that you're checking in with yourself and doing what is appropriate for you. But be honest about what you enjoy as an AFS volunteer and what you don't and always remember to say thank you and be appreciative of those around you. Everyone here is doing amazing work for amazing kids, for an amazing cause.
[Music]
Kate
A big thank you to Ashe and Abdullah for joining me today. Next month, we’re going to keep this conversation going. We’ll be talking with Alessandro from AFS Italy to hear how these same global connections are felt on the shores of Sicily.
Alessandro
You realize why you do it every time you see the kids, and every time you talk to them, every time you see the families, because you realize that the programs are actually doing something, and it's not something small. You know, I'm gonna quote Wicked, “These people change for good.”
Kate
To all the volunteers listening who are doing the work in your own communities: thank you for being the heart, the engine, of this organization. If you are not yet a volunteer with AFS-USA, you can learn more by going to afsusa.org/volutneer.
Kate
Thank you for listening to The AFS Exchange! I’m Kate Mulvihill. Let us know what you thought of this episode by sending a message to podcast@afsusa.org. We’d also love to hear any ideas or suggestions you have for future episodes. You can also rate and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe there as well so you don’t miss any episodes in this 6th season.
This podcast was created by Kate Mulvihill. Social media by Julie Ball and Nina Gaulin. Special thanks to Michelle Bird, Patty Gentry, AFS Intercultural Programs, and AFS Spain.
