What is it that an AFS Volunteer can do? In celebration of the International Year of Volunteers, we asked two of our amazing volunteers to reflect on their recent experience at the AFS Youth Assembly. Volunteers are at the heart of everything our organization does, which is why it’s our distinct pleasure to share their unique perspectives. In this two-part series, you will hear directly from Marianna Baraldi and Carina Boerries.
Heat covers the city of Geneva. Inside a small WHO conference room, degrees are rising too. Not from the weather, but from the energy of the group. While delegates to the AFS Youth Assembly move from panels to workshops, AFS volunteers have gathered here together with president and CEO of AFS, Daniel Obst, and Chair of the International Board of Trustees, Ernesto Rey Moreno. They talked about something that the agenda doesn’t show: What volunteering really means to them.
Not everyone in the room has completed an AFS exchange program. For some, the Youth Assembly is their first contact with AFS. Some are in their twenties, others from older generations. They come from all corners of the world. And yet, hands go up across the room and each person is eager to share their stories, a common thread emerges: volunteering has a lasting impact, on the people they serve, but just as much on themselves.
A volunteer from Brazil speaks of the students she sends off each year, each of them leaving, full of hope, to an exchange program in a country not their own. The bonds formed in that process, she says, are the real substance of her work. An Italian volunteer describes a sense of belonging that he finds wherever is, connecting with fellow AFSers no matter the country.
Priya Jadav who began her AFS journey as a student form India and now volunteers with AFS Canada speaks about how deeply her AFS experience has transformed her into the person she is today. She left her home in India shy and self-conscious. She returned confident. Ever since, she has been giving back through volunteering, changing others’ lives as profoundly as her own was changed. It’s what AFS is about: belonging to something bigger.
Applause fills the room as Priya receives the Young AFS Volunteer Award. For a moment, the summer heat seems almost irrelevant against the shared sense of purpose and community, created by generations of volunteers who give their time, experience and hearts to AFS, every day at their local organizations, and for 3 intensive days at the AFS Youth Assembly in Geneva.
Carina Boerries
2026 AFS Youth Assembly Communications and Social Media Volunteer