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Study Abroad Programs for High School Students Are Back After Pandemic Break

afsusa.org

AFS-USA offers a number of scholarship-based programs for students to spend a year going to school and living with a host family overseas while learning a language and exploring a new culture

High school students who want to spend a year studying abroad can do that again. Many programs were suspended during the height of the pandemic.

There are several run by the State Department and AFS-USA, which stands for American Field Service. Julie Ball of AFS says one program offers the chance to spend a year in Germany.

“This gives students the opportunity to explore German culture and language, they go abroad for an academic year, live with a German host family, attend a local high school,” she said.

Ball said there are 350 scholarships available for this program, and the deadline is Dec. 1.

Since it is an exchange program, AFS is also seeking families here to welcome students from Germany.

Ball said another program offers students the chance to study in any one of a number of countries.

“It aims to build bridges of understanding between Americans and people in countries of strategic importance maybe to the US, and there are 14 countries that students could go to,” she said.

Among them: Bulgaria, Egypt, Ghana and India. The deadline to apply for scholarships here — Dec. 7.

Another program is called the National Security Language Initiative for Youth.

“The program offers the opportunity for students to learn a language,” Ball said, “and these are also in countries of strategic importance to the US, so we would categorize these as critical languages for American youth to learn.”

Students can spend a summer or a full year in countries where languages such as Indonesian, Korean and Persian are spoken. The deadline is coming up — November 3. For more information on all the programs, go to www.afsusa.org.  

Janice Kirkel is a lifelong award-winning journalist who has done everything from network newscasts to national and local sports reports to business newscasts to specialized reporting and editing in technical areas of business and finance such as bankruptcy, capital structure changes and reporting on the business of the investment business.