Digital News AFS Reconquista Local Chapter
Number 1, January 2011
“Wars are born in people’s minds. It is the their minds where peace should be built.”
Family Buyatti-Zamer together with Maxwell Collins (New Zealand – December 2010)
AFS in Reconquista E-mail: rl.reconquista@afs.org.ar 1544-4471
Connecting lives, Sharing Cultures
Connecting lives, Sharing Cultures
Our Mission
AFS Origins
AFS (American Field Service) was founded in 1914 during World War I by a group of young Americans who were against war and who participated in it but driving ambulances in the front, to help the wounded from both sides and hoping this would never happen again. After the two World Wars ended and shocked by the horror of them, they decided to offer opportunities for intercultural learning to students, families, volunteers and professionals, leaving aside prejudice and thus enhancing understanding of other cultures and ways of living. AFS has been doing this since 1947 hoping that, in time, it would help build a fairer and more peaceful world, avoiding future armed conflicts.
AFS Intercultural Programs became the first non-profit organisation exchanging students around the world. AFS is unique because it is made up of volunteers, it’s non-profit, no governmental and it’s not affiliated to any political party, ethnicity or religion. Page 2
Know WHO we are, WHAT we do, and WHY we do it! AFS 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. AFS enables people to act as responsible global citizens working for peace and understanding in a diverse world. It acknowledges that peace is a dynamic concept threatened by injustice, inequity and intolerance.
AFS seeks to affirm faith in the dignity and worth of every human being and of all nations and cultures. It encourages respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms without distinction as to race, sex, language, religion or social status. AFS activities are based on our core values of dignity, respect for differences, harmony, sensitivity and tolerance. The purpose of our organisation is primarily educational, but a very particular type or education, with pre-established goal equally unique. The education AFS provides is the one that allows people change their perspective through a unique experience that exposes them to other cultures and ways of thinking. It requires an active disposition to learn and to learn by doing. This is what we call INTERCULTURAL LEARNING.
AFS today
Connecting lives, Sharing Cultures
AFS Programas Interculturales Argentina & Uruguay is a member of AFS Intercultural Programs, which started operating in 1947. has its international headquarters in New York City. In our country, it has got a National Office located in Buenos Aires and it is represented in 60 Local Chapters in Argentina and Uruguay. Today, AFS is present in 80 different countries and exchanges 13.000 students annually and around the world. It is an Economic and Social consultant in the UNESCO. It has received a special recognition from the UN for its working in favour of the education of young people around the world. In 2006, it was declared of Cultural and Educational interest by the Argentinian Senate.
The Local Chapters are formed by people from different backgrounds, who voluntarily offer their time to make all the programmes run smoothly. The Board is formed by seven members (since April 2011) who are chosen by and among the volunteers, and their job is to meet periodically to evaluate the development of the different programmes, the needs of the Local Chapters, and to set the short, medium-length and long goals as well as the AFS policies. The National Office has a staff made up of 24 professionals who work exclusively for the organisation and its activities. In 2010, nearly 400 exchange students arrived to our country to live their exchange programmes for six months or a school year with host families who receive them voluntarily.
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Connecting lives, Sharing Cultures
Become a volunteer in AFS Reconquista
AFS Reconquista
AFS Reconquista has open doors to all people who feel indentified with the Mission and want to become part of the team and who want to voluntarily help the way a young person and a host family see the world, getting involved in the process and experimenting the intercultural vision and helping the student grow as a citizen of the world, responsible and respectful of the values and the AFS mission.
The AFS Local Chapter in Reconquista was founded 1979 by a young woman from our city who after living her intercultural exchange experience in France, had the dream that many other young people could enrich from the same experience but in our region. She is María Elena Landi, who is today an experienced volunteer with more than 30 years working for our organisation locally and nationally. But the activities of AFS in our region go even further back in time, even before the Chapter creation. It was thanks to Alba Romero, a teacher who was a visionary in her time, who believed education was more than what we find at regular schools in the official curricula. She understood that it was much more than that.
Today, Reconquista Local Chapter has a team of volunteers who feel completely identified with the Mission of the Organisation and who are trained to solve, help, mediate and guide all the participants taking part in the experience (host families, exchange students, and host schools) in intercultural communication, intercultural conflicts, intercultural learning, etc. Page 4
AFS offers to it volunteers, among other things, the following:
a) Sense of belonging, b) Working for a noble idea, c) Meeting new people from around the
world, d) Developing personal skills, e) A working place where everyone has a saying, f) Formal and informal training with constant chances of using that training inside AFS and outside of it. María Elena Landi receiving the Award to the Volunteer Experience in 2010 María Elena Landi Participating of the EFIL Summer Summit in Hungary (July 2010) EFIL: European Federation for Intercultural Learning
Meet the volunteers from AFS Reconquista
María Elena Landi
Sergio Sanchez
Ma. Gabriela Zamer
José Manuel Buyatti
Connecting lives, Sharing Cultures
Claudia Lanteri
Raúl Mina
Marisa Masin
Alejandro Rolón
Ma. Virginia Loza
Maximiliano Bandeo
Many valuable people have come and gone during the past 32 years as a Local Chapter in the North of Santa Fe Province, who have positively contributed to the making AFS an strong organisation.
Roberto Savanco
Stefano Pividori
Nowadays, AFS Reconquista is formed by a team of 12 volunteers who are fully committed to the organisation and who are trained to help the participants along their intercultural exchange experience. Page 5
Connecting lives, Sharing Cultures
Speranza-Gerber Family
Many believe that the end of the experience is when they can back to their homes or when their AFS children leave the host home. They are wrong! It’s just the beginning of another part of A LIFE EXPERIENCE...
The new year begins and the AFS exchange students who are staying in Reconquista and neighbouring cities start counting the days they still have together in our country. Many of them have lived, shared, enjoyed and learned together for 5 or 11 months of their intercultural exchange. They’ve learned a very important lesson for life, and it is that ‘we are all different and that diversity makes us richer’. Diversity of opinions, of ways of being, thinking, living, acting, believing and expressing feelings is what make the world a much more interesting place to live in. Also, during their stay here, students and host families have bonded strongly and expressed their feelings as real families do. It is not strange hearing them say ‘my son from New Zealand’, ‘our daughter from Latvia’ or ‘my Italian brother’. All of them always cry when the time to leave comes, just as if it was wake time, which is in some way. But they cannot understand, but time will help them do, that it is supposed to be like that, and that it is part of the learning experience and that they are getting mature, thanks to the AFS Experience. Page 6
Buyatti-Zamer Family
Connecting lives, Sharing Cultures
Lorenzini-Cian Family It is clear that the biggest sense of growing and feeling of pain is experimented by the exchange students who are the ones leaving. The host family continues with its daily life, its routine, its problems and its regular course. The new goal is to keep these feelings alive and strong even in the distance. Nowadays all the students and family have enough technology at hand to keep in touch. Facebook, Skype, e-mail, etc, are tools that will help them maintain the bonds, feeling close even when they are thousands of miles away. It is really important for both of them to know that those bonds are in some way like a plant that needs to be watered daily, and that if we leave it without water, it will wither to death.
Quintana Family
Would they like that to happen after everything they’ve been through? We don’t think so. So, today more than ever, let’s keep on living the AFS experience with our AFS child, brother or sister.
The volunteers who are part of AFS Reconquista Local Chapter want to thanks the families who have hosted and said goodbye their AFS children in January, 16th 2011. They are: •Family Speranza-Gerber, Liene (Latvia). •Family Buyatti-Zamer, Maxwell (Nueva Zealand). •Family Lorenzini-Cian, Ruggero (Italia). •Family Quintana, Madalyn (EE.UU).
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Connecting lives, Sharing Cultures
Since August2010, these students have been living their intercultural exchange experience in Reconquista and Avellaneda thanks to the following Host Families:
Special recognition
Lisa
We want to thank the following host families who are currently living half their experience by hosting in their home, and up to July 2011, the following exchange students: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
The Quatr铆n-N贸bile family, hosting Eveliina (Finland). The Senestrari-Schaumburg family, hosting Niklas (Germany). The Stechina-Bais family, hosting Myrthe (The Netherlands). The Sartor-Dean family, hosting Lisa (Italy). The Fabrissin-Vanrell family, hosting Ida (Norway).
Niklas
It is thanks to their generosity, the wish to grow as a family and the desire to help a young person from other culture to grow and mature in an intercultural context, that AFS Programas Interculturales can continue with its Mission.
Myrthe Eveliina
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Ida
New students are arriving to Reconquista, Avellaneda & Malabrigo.
Connecting lives, Sharing Cultures
Sunday, 27th of February 2011. Come and meet them! Just a few weeks before they arrive, these three students from Germany, Thailand and Island, are already talking to their Argentinian host families, meeting them, and paving the way for the great meeting next February 27, at the local bus station. 1. Ronja (Germany), will be the new member of the Fenoglio-Morzán family in Avellaneda and will attend the Instituto Gustavo Martínez Zuviría High School.
2. Siripattara “Mook” (Thailand), will come to live with
the Rambaldo-Amarrilla family, in Malabrigo and will go to EDEM N 9232 "Martín Miguel de Güemes“ School.
3. Alfur (Island), will become the first son and brother in
the Moschén-Vogel family from Reconquista. During his experience, we will attend as a regular student to EDEN N 203 "Juan Bautista Alberdi“ High School. All of them will meet in Argentina, and will stay up to January 2012, in a annual programme.
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AFS is looking for a host family for: Caroline (44 years old) New Zealand Intensive Programme (a month from March 2011)
AFS in Reconquista and the area, presents its new programme for Foreign Teachers. This time, we introduce Caroline, who a 44-year-old teacher from New Zealand. She dances and plays tennis. She loves cooking, walking, reading, travelling and watching films.
What do you need to provide as a family if you want to host Caroline? 1) Genuine interest to live the experience; 2) To give her a friendly and stable family atmosphere; 3) A place where to sleep; 4) Provide her with food.
AFS Reconquista Contacts José Manuel Buyatti 1544-4471 María Elena Landi 421350 Claudia Lanteri 424507 Sergio Sanchez 1545-7527
E-mail: rl.reconquista@afs.org.ar www.afs.org.ar
AFS RL RECONQUISTA
Connecting lives, Sharing Cultures