Host an international student for a school year.

I am recruiting families to host an international high school student to live in your home and experience life in America with your family creates a connection that will last a lifetime.

Become a host family and give a high school student an opportunity to enjoy a positive, life-changing experience!


As an AYUSA Host Family, you provide:

A safe, warm and nurturing environment for your international student for either a full academic year or fall semester
A private or shared bedroom (with a host sibling of the same gender)
Three meals a day
Necessary transportation

Your international student’s natural parents will pay for all travel costs, program fees and health insurance. They will also provide your student with a monthly spending allowance used for school expenses, social activities, clothing and other essentials.
What are the Benefits of Hosting a Student?

Introduce your family to a new culture and language
Grow closer as a family as you help your international student to learn about your town and area
Experience the joys of having a new family member to love
Practice hospitality and generosity with your own family
Support diversity and cross-cultural understanding in your own home
Increase cultural awareness in your community
Help to make a difference in the world
Create an international friendship that lasts a lifetime

As an AYUSA host family, a $50 per month tax deduction can be claimed for each month you host an international high school student.

Still looking for families to open their home to a student from abroad. It would will certainly be a unique experience for the whole family.

Good luck!
Why would anyone want to host someone for free knowing that the child's parents paid a small fortune to this organization to send him/her to the US for 9 months? This company is pocketing a huge chunk of money and expect to keep all of it as profit?
This is a scam...if you are generous and wish to make a difference in the world as this recruiter indicates, just sponsor and volunteer to host someone who comes from a non-profit organization not someone who has chosen such company because he didn't know better.
There are many other organizations out there who are not looking at benefiting both ways.

Did some research and this is an awful story. http://www.ripoffreport.com/corrupt-com ... -ycda9.htm

I can only hope this is an exception.

I worked for over 20 years directing an international student program at an accredited university and we would see students coming from these organizations weekly. The parents paid a fortune and the organization would basically provide zero support once they got paid. In the meantime, the generous host family was left to become a surrogate parent because it felt bad about the whole situation.
Most of the recruiters hired to 'find' generous and loving families get a set compensation per family, so they don't care who they recruit as long as they recruit someone and get paid. That tells you about the kind of screening that is being done. Close to none..... And I don't even want to talk about the recruiters hired by these companies. Many have a background preventing them from working elsewhere (think felonies!) and they are the ones that generous and loving families invite to their homes to pass the initial screening...It is a scam and anyone who is seriously thinking about hosting a student should stay away. There are lots of other ways to accomplish this if your family is interested. One would be to get in touch with an accredited high school who organizes exchanges directly with another HS overseas and who would love to have local families host the visiting students.

Wow, you guys are spewing negative information. Both uncalled for and incorrect!

The company I work for provides excellent support to both the families and the students. Their are at least two people assigned to visit the student and family each month and the student is taken on trips by our staff along with the other international students. Most of the students are supported by GRANTS through their government and their parents pay little for them to come to America. The company gets it's money from our government through the Department of State again through those same grants. We are a non-profit company. Everyone who works for my company is subjected to a criminal background check.

People who bring international students into expand their cultural awareness too. Your financial responsibility is quite minimal and mainly consists of room and board for your student, which includes 3 meals a day. A $50 per month tax deduction can be claimed for each month you host.

The students are high school age, they do not attend college here.

Thank you so much Sereengreen for the info. Glad you straightened it out. Ignore the hecklers.

This is untrue.
It cost $500 to submit an application as a student, then $2,000 2 weeks after the application has been received.
Final payment are due prior to departure and that is another $7,000 to $12,000 depending on the country chosen by the student. All this money is funded by the family, not a grant. Return flight is not included in this price. The grant you are referring to is what is used to pay for the actual cost of education in a US High school (since the family of these students doesn't live in the US and pays for taxes). This is usually roughly $5,000 for a student attending High School and is known as the 'true cost of education', which is what the cost to educate a US resident or citizen in the US cost to attend a US high school for one academic year.

Yes, they are all high school students but I still saw them in my office as we were the only FAFSA and INS accredited college in the area.

The money collected by the company is mostly profit. The host family forks out lodging and meals and more as the family is only told that $200/month should cover everything else, the student's family pays for everything else in addition to the hefty fee they paid to simply 'participate' in the program. The US recruiter (AKA local rep) is paid a commission each time s/he locates a suitable family who eventually ends up hosting (typically $500 per placement). If it doesn't work out, the student moves in with the local rep until a new suitable family is found. This happens quite often. Nobody is a winner...

Rumba Why are you so discouraging and negative. Is that the sole reason you joined? Find something else to complain about really.

Look up FLEX - The Freedom Support Act (FSA) Secondary School Initiative, also known as the Bradley Bill, was signed by President Bush on October 25, 1992. The purpose of the program is to promote understanding between young people of the United States and the twelve newly independent states (NIS) of the former Soviet Union comprised of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.

In 1997, the program was renamed the Future Leaders Exchange Program (FLEX). The FLEX Program provides full scholarships for over 1,000 select high school students from the throughout the states of the NIS to spend an academic year in the United States. The highly competitive scholarship is merit based and students are selected by independent evaluators in Washington D.C. AYUSA places a large contingent of FLEX students in the U.S.,

YES - In 2003, AYUSA was awarded a major grant from the U.S. Department of State to administer an academic year program for students from predominantly Islamic countries. This initiative was a result of Congressional discussions following the events of September 11, 2001, to build bridges of understanding between the United States and countries with significant Muslim populations. From 2003 to the present a total of 3,480 students have participated in the YES program. During the 2009-2010 academic year, over 800 students will participate in the program.

CBYX - The program provides full scholarships to several hundred selected American and German students.

The info you provided indeed shows some scholarship opportunities for parents and students.

1) How many students from NIS of the former soviet union or coming for Islamic countries (all grant/scholarship recipients)have you actually placed in the past year in the area you are responsible for?
2) How many others were not grant/scholarship recipients?
2) What is the total number of students and breakdown of the student's nationality placed in the USA and in your area currently (academic year 2010/2011)?
3) What kind of trips were organized for these students in the area and how many participated?

You may also point me to nationwide statistics for your organization besides what is available through SEVIS as I was not able to find anything on your company website.
Thank you.