In ihrem Schlusswort am AFS Volunteer Training 2024 hat Jennifer Petree (Chapter Vaud) auf den Punkt gebracht, was die Entwicklung von Global Citizens für sie bedeutet.
Hi everyone. If we didn’t yet get a chance to meet, I’m Jennifer, and I’m a selection interview volunteer and new intercultural trainer for AFS. I was asked to say a few words to help us put the weekend into a larger context. But before doing that, I’d like to say thanks for the chance to be here with all of you this weekend and to be part of AFS again, after a long absence.
It’s been 35 years since I first joined AFS as a US exchange student to Argentina in 1987, an experience that was life changing. But then for a million different reasons, I didn’t stay involved with AFS after I returned home, nor after I came to live in Switzerland 20 years ago. That was until last year, when I saw an ad for a selection interviewer, and I thought – I have teenagers of my own, I love young people, and I still believe in the AFS mission – let’s do this.
And I am so glad I did. Re-engaging with AFS as a volunteer has given me the opportunity to join a community of like-minded people, and to enjoy long discussions with dozens of curious, open-minded teens from my region during our selection interviews. I love getting to know each of them, hearing about their dreams, and then telling them about AFS and how an exchange year can be so important in shaping their life path and personal development.
But I’m also grateful to have re-engaged with AFS for other reasons, one of which is a feeling – a feeling of being disheartened and worried about our increasingly conflictual world and divided societies. It’s a time and a world where it’s easy to feel powerless to change much. And it’s in these difficult times that being part of AFS so important, because it’s given me a sense of agency – a feeling that I have the power to help, in a small way, to create positive, transformational experiences for a new generation of young people – young people who I hope will then go on to become the kind of ambassadors for peace that our world so desperately needs.
Imagine if every one of today’s leaders – Trump, Putin, Netanyahu- had been an AFS student, a host parent or a volunteer,.. I’m sure we would be living in a very different kind of world right now.
In these difficult times, that are also hyper competitive and performance driven, it’s also empowering to be part of a human-centered organization that trusts in the talents of volunteers, and gives us a real voice in how the organization runs. It’s something very rare that I don’t take for granted.
Finally, I am grateful to have re-engaged with AFS at an important time of transformation for the organization, where intercultural learning is emerging as a new, secondary « line of business » for us, that can help broaden our impact and connect us to new audiences here at home.
And Switzerland, in my opinion, is the perfect context for this new kind of education. Because while we have always been a multicultural population, recent decades of immigration have made us one of the most culturally diverse societies in Europe, especially where I live, in the Romandie, where more than half of young people have a multicultural identity or live in a household where at least one parent was born elsewhere.
Growing cultural diversity is, in my opinion, a huge asset for the country, but also a big challenge. It means that we all need stronger intercultural skills to negotiate life, work and relationships, skills like the ones we’ve been developing this weekend. I really believe that AFS is uniquely positioned to help meet this need and I feel excited about the opportunities we have in this space.
And here is my final take away – I believe growing cultural diversity in Switzerland is also an opportunity and a challenge for our organization – internally. I hope that moving forward, we will become more successful in recruiting a more volunteers, host families and teens to send on exchange that better reflect the rich cultural mosaic that is our country today. It would make us a more resilient and relevant organization going forward, and one that I would feel even more excited to be part of.
In the meantime, I hope you all enjoyed your weekend, that you feel newly inspired in your volunteers roles and I wish you all a safe journey home.
