AFS Intercultural Programs is an international, voluntary, non-governmental, non-profit organization that provides intercultural learning opportunities to help people develop the knowledge, skills and understanding needed to create a more just and peaceful world.

Our vision at AFS is to ensure a more peaceful, just, equitable and sustainable future. To ensure such a future, the world needs more active global citizens. Through our programs, education initiatives, volunteerism and advocacy efforts, AFS helps create them.

Early in March 2020, some 7,000 students had to end their AFS study abroad programs early due to the COVID-19 pandemic. AFS volunteers and staff around the world worked day and night to reunite participants with their families in their home countries and continued to provide all program support and services to those participants who remained under the care of host families before returning home. AFS rapidly reconfigured and deployed a virtual learning platform, based on our AFS Global Competence Certificate, to provide those thousands of young people with ongoing support, community and learning during the crisis. By 2022 nearly 8,000 students were back to participating in in-person exchanges, while 5,000 participants now join our virtual programs every year.

Creating Global Citizens: The AFS Effect is the first large-scale, global survey of the AFS alumni community based on responses from over 10,500 former AFS participants across 80 countries. This study explores the effect an AFS experience can have on the lives and careers of our alumni while investigating the impact of secondary school mobility globally. It also includes real-life examples from our former participants of changes alumni can bring to their local communities thereby furthering the AFS mission worldwide.

The first-ever AFS Global Conference gathered 450+ delegates from 70 countries for a groundbreaking conversation on Global Competence: Our Future, Our Responsibility, in Budapest, Hungary. This and the following annual AFS Global Conferences set an ambitious action agenda focused on making global competence education a right for all people worldwide.

In 2015, AFS fortified its position as an intercultural education organization using the AFS Educational Goals to guide these efforts. AFS developed customized intercultural learning curricula for students and host families to enhance their exchange experience and build intercultural skills that will last a lifetime.

AFS commemorated its centennial in 2014-2015. From the founding of the American Ambulance Field Service in April 1915 to more than 450,000 former AFS Participants in its centennial year, AFS celebrated its continuation as a volunteer organization daring to create change and dedicated to building an inclusive community of global citizens determined to build bridges among cultures. The worldwide celebrations included youth forums and a global symposium at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, France.

The AFS Foundation was established on July 13, 2004, in Zurich, Switzerland. It endeavors to preserve the AFS legacy and holds the AFS name and logo. AFS World War II Driver and Life Trustee Ward Chamberlin, Jr. noted that the founding date was the fortieth anniversary of the death of Stephen Galatti, founder of the post-war student exchange programs. Chamberlin and the founding members dedicated the AFS Foundation to the memory of Galatti and “the worldwide struggle for peace to which he devoted his life.”

In February 1984, the Workshop on Intercultural Learning Content and Quality Standards (also known as the Montreal Workshop) affirmed AFS’s commitment to intercultural learning and formally defined its Educational Goals. These 16 Educational Goals continue to define the educational approach, guide ongoing practices (such as orientation activities), and set AFS apart as a unique educational program. AFS Participants attain some of these goals during the AFS experience; others involve a lifetime of reflection. The goals involve growth and change in terms of personal values and skills, interpersonal relationship building, intercultural knowledge and sensitivity, and global issues awareness.

Throughout the 1960s the AFS Winter Program Participants (students coming to the U.S.) continued to meet with U.S. presidents in Washington, D.C., before heading back to their home countries at the end of their stay abroad. The presidents lauded the organization for its contributions to U.S. public diplomacy efforts, and often directly addressed the role of AFS Participants in promoting a more peaceful world.

In the summer of 1948, 29 AFSers embarked on a 24 day, 5,500 mile bus trip through 22 states across the United States. Participants included students from the new secondary school exchange program, in addition to those on the university fellowship program. Stops along the way included the White House in Washington, D.C., the Ford Motor Company assembly plant in Michigan, the Seven Falls of Colorado, and a baseball game in Tennessee. One of the purposes of the bus trip, which continued in following years, was to interest Americans in providing scholarships and hospitality for future AFS Participants.

In April 15, 1945, the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated by British forces. A contingent of AFS ambulance drivers volunteered to assist with the stretcher-bearing details, distributing meals and medical equipment, and evacuating more than 11,000 people to a displaced persons camp that had been established nearby. The cessation of wartime hostilities came just months after the evacuation of the camp. By the end of the war, the 2,196 ambulance drivers had carried more than 700,000 wounded.

AFS was reactivated as a volunteer ambulance corps shortly after the start of World War II in 1939 under the leadership of Director General Stephen Galatti. The first unit of Americans sailed from New York on March 23, 1940, and joined men who had already volunteered in Europe. After the German invasion and the establishment of Vichy France in June 1940, AFS halted service in France

The Réserve Mallet was the collective name for the camion (truck) units engaged in the transportation of supplies for the French during World War I. Volunteers were recruited for the camion units beginning in April 1917, the same month the United States entered the war. Shortly after establishing the camion units (and partly because of it), the organization changed its name from the American Ambulance Field Service to the American Field Service (AFS.) The United States military later absorbed the AFS ambulance and camion units into their ranks by the end of 1917.

A. Piatt Andrew volunteered as an ambulance driver for the American Ambulance Hospital in January 1915. At the time of Andrew’s arrival, the ambulance drivers at the Hospital primarily ferried patients from the train stations in Paris to hospitals around the city. In March, Andrew was made Inspector General of the Hospital’s Transportation Committee, and in April he successfully negotiated with the French Army to have some ambulance sections of the Hospital work closer to the front lines of battle. These ambulance sections came to be known as the “American Ambulance Field Service.”