Shannon Thornton, Lower Greenville resident and Local Coordinator for the AIFS Foundation’s Academic Year in America high school exchange program, is presently interviewing families in the East Dallas/Lakewood area to host a foreign exchange student. The cross-cultural learning program places teenagers from Europe, Asia and South America with American families for a semester or school year.

The program gives American families the chance to learn about a foreign culture. Exchange students bring their holiday customs, their native language and the special dishes of their homelands into their American homes. They arrive as strangers and often become ‘sons’ and ‘daughters’ in their American families.

Next year’s participants, chosen from hundreds of applicants, will arrive in Texas this August. They all speak English, are covered by full medical insurance, and have their own spending money. Host families are eligible to receive a travel scholarship worth up to $1000 off the cost of an AIFS study/travel abroad program.

Families do not have to have high school students, or any children at all to participate! Retired couples and single parents also make great host families. Give an exchange student the opportunity to experience what makes living in East Dallas so special!

And it’s not too late! Families interested in choosing a foreign student to host for the 2008-2009 academic semester or year should contact Local Coordinator Shannon Thornton at 214-454-9101 (via email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ) or contact AYA at 1-800-322-4678. 

Visit them online at http://www.academicyear.org/