Support volunteers have the unique position and ability to promote participant intercultural learning and skill building throughout the year, and to help participants become active global citizens.
At the core of our mission, AFS strives to develop Active Global Citizens. Through the transformative lifelong pursuit that involves both formal learning and practical experience, Global Citizenship Education helps people of all ages:
- Respect cultural, gender, faith, and other differences.
- Become more aware of the world beyond our own.
- Understand our responsibilities as members of the global community.
- Embrace our roles in protecting our planet for a sustainable future.
- Be mindful about how our local actions impact the greater world.
As the primary point of contact for participants, support volunteers help participants reflect on their experiences and work through challenges in ways that can advance their intercultural learning in powerful ways. You may also find that the experience of being a support volunteer with AFS is enriching to your own intercultural skill building and role as an active global citizen as well, and that’s wonderful! Click here for more information on AFS’s learning objectives.
When support volunteers can understand and recognize their own cultural norms and values, they are better equipped to navigate a cross-cultural experience and are able to effectively engage with AFS participants, so we encourage you to reflect on your own culture lenses. We are all influenced by our own personal and national cultures that shape our views of the world. They determine how we live, how we communicate with and relate to others every day, and what we view of as right and wrong. It can be common for people to not always be fully aware of how they are influenced heavily by their own culture and cultural values. This is why the AFS Learning Objectives for participants focus on this important area of learning. Each “culture” includes a closely-knit pattern of assumptions, behaviors, values, and practices that works for the people who share it. Every cultural system has an impact on its people in determining how the world is perceived, how the “self” is experienced, and how life is organized within that culture. The perceptions you carry are as specific and unique as your fingerprints.
Support volunteers are expected to help participants come to understand through their experiences on program how their culture may influence the way in which they interact and conduct themselves on the program. Similarly, it can be important for support volunteers to help participants understand how the culture in their host country and host community can affect how others relate toward them and interpret their behavior. An AFS volunteer cannot be expected to be a “cultural expert” in the culture of their hosted participants. Nor do we expect the participant or host family to become “experts” during the program. Rather, we define Intercultural Skill Building as the development skills that help people relate to others across cultural differences.
We are all ethnocentric in varying degrees, sharing the view that one’s own culture sets the standard by which all other cultures are measured. When left unrecognized, this prevents us from appreciating and understanding another culture on its own terms. AFS promotes intercultural learning and skill building through facilitating relationships and promoting curiosity. AFS support volunteers work to help promote the building of participant relationships across four areas:
- The participant’s relationship with their new culture,
- The participant’s relationship with their host family,
- The participant's relationship with their host school and host community, and
- The participant’s understanding of themselves.
Support volunteers are encouraged to practice the same curiosity we hope to promote in participants: observe without evaluating, suspend judgment to understand, and be patient in our dealings with others.
One example of cultural differences that can be common for participants to encounter is the difference between Individualist orientation versus Collectivist orientation. When helping a participant, support volunteers can consider whether the participant is from a society that is more “individualist” or “collectivist” and whether this is a factor in their behavior and communication with others.
Individualist Cultures
The five most strongly individualist cultures are the United States, Australia, Great Britain, Canada, and the Netherlands; other Northern European countries rank high on this scale as well. These cultures highly value the following characteristics:
- self-reliance
- equality
- freedom
- personal goals
- personal enjoyment
- free choice of whom one can be loyal to
Additionally, individualist cultures tend to view time as immediate and the future as something foreseeable.
Collectivist Cultures
More than two-thirds of the world’s population belong to collectivist cultures. The most strongly collectivist societies include those of Venezuela, Colombia, Pakistan, Peru, and Taiwan. Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Turkey, Greece, Portugal and most other cultures in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America are highly collectivist as well. These cultures emphasize and value:
- loyalty to a specific group and distrust of those in other groups
- self-discipline
- honoring parents and elders
- self-effacement
- accepting one’s position in life
- preserving one’s public image for the sake of the group
You can learn more about Cultural Considerations and Tools for Promoting Learning by clicking here.
Click here for more information on Intercultural Resources and Guidance that is provided to host families in the Help & Learning for Host Families platform
Volunteers can further develop their intercultural learning skills by enrolling in Foundations of Intercultural Learning and Global Competence. This self-paced, online course is considered essential for volunteers working to support all students, as it introduces many of the concepts covered in the Student Learning Journey. Connect with other volunteers internationally, increase your global competence skills, and earn a certificate. Read more and register for Foundations here.