Apr 25 / International Coffee House to Honor Exchange Visitor

This article was originally posted at The Oshkosh Northwestern

Contributed by Mary Ann Offer
The Oshkosh Northwestern, WI

The public is invited to an International Coffee House, on Friday, April 25, from 7 to 9:30 p.m., at the UW Oshkosh Women’s Center. The Women’s Center is on Irving Street, near the corner of Elmwood and Irving Streets. The Oshkosh AFS Chapter is hosting the coffee house to honor Youth and Exchange Study (YES) Program visitor, Armieyah “Mae” Ayob, a 2004-2005 Philippine exchange student to Milwaukee who was selected by AFS in the Philippines to represent them at a recent YES Program conference in Washington, D.C. Currently hosted YES students will be helping to host the coffee house. Coffee, non-alcoholic beverages, and international desserts will be served. There is no admission fee or charge for refreshments.

In 1947 a group of World War I and II American volunteer ambulance drivers, the American Field Service (AFS), started an intercultural exchange program. They wanted to provide a way for people from different countries and cultures to learn to understand each other, in hopes of finding a way to world peace. The first AFS exchange students were German teenagers who came to the US, their country’s recent adversary, just a few years after the end of World War II. In the sixty years since then, hundreds of thousands of teenagers from around the world have lived as members of families in different countries as AFS exchange students. The Oshkosh AFS chapter has hosted 107 AFS students since the first German student, Gabriela Borbein, came to Oshkosh High School in 1950, and 56 Oshkosh students have lived with families in 27 different countries as AFS exchange students.

After the events of September 11, 2001, it became clear to people concerned about world peace that Americans and Muslims from other parts of the world were suffering from a lack of understanding of each others’ cultures. In collaboration with other exchange partners and with funding from the U.S. Department of State’s Educational and Cultural Affairs Bureau, AFS entered into an agreement to provide a full-scholarship exchange program to students from countries with significant Muslim populations. This is known as the Youth Exchange and Study (YES) Program. Thirty countries participate; AFS hosts YES students from nine of them: Turkey, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Ghana, and the Philippines, with Kenya soon to follow.

photo: Oshkosh hosted students meet with Senator Herb Kohl

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