AFS Intercultural Programs

International youth exchange organization AFS Intercultural Programs (or AFS, originally the American Field Service) is an international youth exchange organization. It consists of over 50 independent, not-for-profit organizations, each with its network of volunteers, professionally staffed offices, volunteer board of directors and website. In 2015[update], 12,578 students traveled abroad on an AFS cultural exchange program, between 99 countries. The US-based partner, AFS-USA, sends more than 1,000 US students abroad and places foreign students with more than 2,000 US families each year. As of 2022, more than 500,000 people had gone abroad with AFS and over 100,000 former AFS students lived in the US. History World War I American Field Service poster When World War I broke out in 1914, the American Colony of Paris organized an "ambulance"—the French term for a temporary military hospital—just as it had done in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 when the "American Ambulance" had been under tents set up near the Paris home of its founder, the celebrated Paris-American dentist, Thomas W. Evans. The "American Ambulance" of 1914 took over the premises of the unfinished Lycée Pasteur i