New Alumni Website

We have just re-launched the AFS Alumni website which has received an update of the content and a full facelift to bring it inline with the look and feel of our other digital and print publications.

The Alumni website is a fantastic resource for AFS returnees and offers several exciting tools and benefits:

Connect with Other Alumni
The website contains a section where you can search for other AFS Alumni and reconnect with them. You are able to send a message via an online contact form that sends them an email (no email addresses are disclosed for privacy reasons). If you would like other Alumni to be able to email you, please make sure your contact details are up-to-date by logging in here.

Suggest the Alumni Newsletter
We have implemented a facility whereby you can suggest the Alumni Newsletter to your friends so that they may sign up to receive it.

Exclusive Alumni Discounts
AFS Alumni currently have access to a couple of great discounts through UPS and Orbit Travel. This is an area we plan to expand significantly so make sure you make the most of these deals and keep an eye out for new exclusive offers coming soon!

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Greyhound Scholarship News and Update

Baylee de Malmanche is this year's worthy winner of the Greyhound Scholarship which is funded by donations from generous AFS Alumni.

In August Baylee will be travelling to Massachusetts, USA, and will be living a short forty minute drive from Boston. She says she is very excited about the trip but will miss her friends and family here in New Zealand very much.

As she is in the USA for an entire year, she will be spending Christmas and her birthday away from her family. While not looking forward to those times, she seems confident that she'll pull through. On another positive note, she may even get a White Christmas…

Baylee has already spoken to her American host family and is looking forward to meeting them in person. The Waihi College student said she's glad to have the last two weeks of school holidays to settle down with her host family before beginning her schooling at Westford Academy. Upon her arrival, Baylee and her new family will be taking her host sister to a University in Canada, which is sure to be both an interesting and bonding experience.

When asked, Baylee confessed one of her biggest aspirations is to play American Football, if only to tell them that rugby really is the superior sport.

Baylee says she is thankful to everyone who has helped her with the process of the exchange, including her family, friends and AFS members. She is especially thankful to all those involved in the Greyhound Fund for their integral part in her experience.

The Greyhound Fund is kept alive by the donations of AFS returnees from the U.S. in the period 1947 -1976. It is these donations which help worthy individuals, such as Baylee, travel and study abroad when they otherwise may not have been able to do so.

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Galipolli Youth Award

2011 AFS Gallipoli Youth Award: Heather Mackay's Experiences in Family History.

It is an interesting paradox that while war has the ability to leave in tatters international relations, it also has the ability to build and foster lasting relationships that bridge the boundaries of culture and language. With its roots in a volunteer ambulance corps, established during WWI, AFS has been instrumental in the years since WWI in encouraging international friendship through its intercultural exchange programmes. The AFS Gallipoli Youth Award is an annual programme which gives one New Zealand student each year the opportunity to visit Turkey for six weeks, and to take part in the ANZAC and Turkish commemorations of WWI. The programme is open to New Zealand high school students who have a blood relative who served in the Gallipoli campaign. 2011 recipient Heather Mackay is immensely grateful to AFS for the opportunity she had to both learn the importance of WWI to her own personal history and to form friendships with her host family and classmates in Turkey. "Greatest experience of my life," she says, smiling.

Heather applied for the Gallipoli Youth Award after hearing about it through a family friend. Although Heather had never left the country, she was bursting to do so, and decided to write the essay. "I thought, 'I'll give it a try', but I didn't have high hopes," she says, modestly. WWI is of particular significance to Heather due to her family history; Heather's great great uncle, Private Herbert Stanley Sing served during the Gallipoli Campaign. Herbert's especially close relationship with his sister, Heather's great grandmother, ensured that he was a part of Heather's life as she grew up. Heather's great grandmother, Bertha Frances Mackay-Campbell, died when she was 105, and throughout her long life, she retained strong memories of her brother. She often told stories of Herbert to Heather as a child. "She never got to say goodbye to him, so she always told stories about him," says Heather. Her closeness to her great grandmother inspired Heather to write her essay, and she was absolutely delighted to discover that she had been chosen for the award.

Heather was initially nervous, as she spoke no Turkish, and didn't know what to expect in a country so culturally different to New Zealand, but after speaking with the 2010 Gallipoli Youth Award recipient, Devon Francis, she felt assured. After a very long trip, Heather arrived in Çanakkale, where she was to stay with her host family for six weeks. She was especially excited about bonding with her host-sister, "I've never had a little sister before!" She laughs, "I would love to see them again." In Çanakkale she attended the local high school, which she found challenging due to the language barrier, but she described attending school as one of the highlights of her trip. "We did a lot of sign language," said Heather, who nevertheless made fast friendships and found that language barriers were often no barrier to amity.

The pinnacle of Heather's trip was her visit to Gallipoli, which she visited to attend the Anzac services, an experience which she found emotionally moving. She attended the dawn service at North Beach, then ate a hearty buffet breakfast. "That was another highlight," she said with a grin, "the Turkish food was delicious." Heather then attended the Australian service, the Turkish service, and finally, the New Zealand service. The New Zealand service especially resonated with Heather. "It was very weird being there, knowing that I was standing on the same soil that my great great uncle had stood on," she reminisced. Standing at Anzac Cove also made Heather feel very close to her great grandmother; Bertha had wanted to visit the sites where her brother had fought, and his grave in France, but was unable to do so during her lifetime, and it was important to Heather to carry out her great grandmother's dream.

Heather's guided tour of Gallipoli was particularly eye-opening, and she found that her own knowledge of WWI, and the knowledge of other New Zealand students, was rather lacking. "I don't know if we completely get it…I studied it at school in history class, but I don't think we really understand it," she mused. She is extremely grateful to AFS for allowing her the opportunity to visit Anzac Cove, an experience she thinks every New Zealander should have. "When I went on the tour the guide told me so much that I didn't know, so many things about New Zealanders that I hadn't even realised….it's something you need to do."

Enriched by her experiences in Turkey, Heather now has a serious case of wanderlust. Fortunately, she now has a passport, and intends to travel much more. Her family history remains important to her, and she hopes to visit her great great uncle's grave in France, and say a final goodbye on behalf of her great grandmother. Moreover, her involvement in the AFS community is not yet over. Heather says that she would love to host an AFS student, and intends to keep in contact with her Turkish friends. She is immeasurably thankful to AFS, and would encourage other students to take part in the AFS Gallipoli Youth Award. "I would never have had this experience without AFS," says Heather, whose experience truly demonstrates the bonds which form from the ruins of war, and the importance of the AFS community in facilitating on-going international friendships and understanding.

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Departure Day: When it's Time to Say Goodbye

The following is an exerpt from Intercultural Link; AFS International's newsletter on intercultural learning (ICL). Written by Elis Motta, Intercultural Learning Intern, AFS International.

When I was first invited to be a volunteer for the AFS USA Departure Day in New York I could not imagine what a huge structure it involved. I knew we would be dealing with hundreds of AFS students from all around the world minutes before they were heading back to their country of origin, but what I did not know was how organized and motivated the AFS USA team of staff and volunteers was. And even after years volunteering for AFS, we sometimes forget how rich these experiences are: being in contact with hundreds of students from many different countries and cultures at the moment they are closing what they may very likely call the best time of their lives.

Some are talking, telling jokes or stories, singing, or just trying to make the most of the very last hours they have together. Others are quiet, sitting together in silence or simply hugging their dear friends for as long as they can before heading to opposite ends of the globe.

You see smiles, laughter, and tears – it is not uncommon to find all of these expressions on the same face at the same time. You see luggage, a lot of luggage. Watching them, I couldn't stop thinking, "What is it that these young men and women are taking home with them?" It is certainly not just one (or two, or three) heavy suitcases. They are also taking home new family, friends, language, and new ways to communicate, dress, and behave. And they are bringing with them a changed world view. The world is now much bigger for these students than it was on the day they arrived in the USA. I would even dare to say that it is much more diverse now, too.

This is an instance when we can clearly see how much people change during their AFS experience. A staff member from AFS Japan who was with us to be a chaperon for her students back to Japan told me how surprised she was to not be able to distinguish the Japanese students from among most of the other Asian students present: "They all look American now," she said.

And the same applies to students from all other countries who had just spent a year in the U.S. They have grown to incorporate the "American style" into the way they dress, but more than that, they also talk and act like US Americans now – well beyond the fact that they are fluent in English (and, in some cases, now a little less fluent in their mother tongue!) They can now be considered culturally comfortable in the USA, and culture shock seems to be a distant experience, at least until they return home.

During the hours that I spent with these students, I wondered how much each had learned from the other. How much did the Italian girl gain from the Thai boy who went to the same school in a small Georgia town? What would the Finnish student have learned about other cultures – other ways to communicate, share emotions and build relationships – in interacting with her Dominican best friend who was somewhere in Maine? There was also the Turkish youth who dated the Paraguayan girl during the year they spent in South Carolina.

In short, these sojourners did not only learn a lot about US American culture, they also learned how to relate and interact with different cultures – helping them better prepare to interact with the increasingly diverse and globalized world in which we live.

So, at a time of good-byes, the forwardlooking parting words of Jorge Castro, President of AFS USA, could not have rung more true: "This is not the end. This is just the beginning."

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