AFS HISTORY

    In 1914, at the burst of the first world war, a group of young American people that were in France decided to constitute a net of ambulances in support to the American hospital of Neuilly. This was the accidental birth of the American Ambulance Field Service (AAFS). Its leader, A. Piatt Andrew, recruited thousand of volunteers in Europe and in America; Stephen Galatti organized them in an auxiliary corp that simply became American Field Service (AFS) in 1916.

    At the end of the war (1918), trying not to remain just a group of former soldiers, the organization decided to maintain an active role by . But, when in 1939 it bursted the second world war, Stephen Galatti immediately put up again the service of ambulances. The AFS volunteers helped in England in 1940, in Greece and Palestine in 1941 and then, following the allied troops, in North Africa, in Italy and in India. In the April of 1945 the AFS volunteers were between those people that, horrified, crossed the gates of the lager of Bergen-Belsen.

    At the end of the second world war, the AFS volunteers devoted themselves to build peace: in 1946 the volunteers decided to begin a new program to host in the United States foreign high school students: it is a revolutionary idea, never tried before by any government or private organization. From 1950 the program grows quickly. Abroad several AFS associations are constituted by volunteers and returnees. AFS builds one permanent center in New York. When Stephen Galatti died in 1964, the AFS was by then the widest international organization for student exchanges and for the education to peace. At first AFS was only in western countries and in developing countries, then, from the 1980s, AFS reached the socialist countries in Europe and China. The italian AFS was born in 1955 and in 1977 took the name of Intercultura.

    In 1967 an European coordination center opened in Bruxelles: it will become federation in 1971, with the name of E.F.I.L. (European Federation for Intercultural Learning).

    AFS Images Through Time : on the web site of AFS International there is the history of AFS through pictures.