Arranging safe homestays

Katherine Bailey
Spokane, Washington

Dear Katherine,
I hear your pain. Entrusting the welfare of your students to total strangers is nothing to take lightly. Unfortunately, there are no international standards or watchdog agencies for homestay providers, so make sure you do your homework.

On the up side, many westernized countries have established homestay agencies, which maintain strict guidelines for both host families and guests and also require applications from both parties to ensure a good match. Reputable agencies will also conduct family interviews and do thorough home inspections, looking for cleanliness, healthy food, home security, pets, laundry facilities and easy access to transportation. Some agencies even require criminal records for any host family member over 18 and perform random house checks to make sure standards remain up to scratch. Guests are generally screened for native language skills, age, smoking habits, allergies and dietary restrictions.

Before accepting a homestay arrangement, be sure to ask the agency coordinator how the host families are screened. Get references from other teachers or group leaders who have used the agency before, and find out who the local emergency contact person will be throughout the homestay. If you’re really curious (or really cautious), try establishing an e-pal correspondence between your students and the prospective host families so that everyone can get to know each other beforehand.

You can get your feet wet in the wide world of international homestays by contacting these well-know organizations: Center for Cultural Interchange, World Homestay, US Servas, Worldwide Homestay France and British Home Stays Limited.

A final word of wisdom: be mindful of the living standard of the country you plan to visit. In urban Ecuador, my family had only one twin bed for my 175-pound friend and me to share. In rural Costa Rica, my bed was a concrete slab. And on Taquile Island in Peru’s Lake Titicaca, my indigenous host family generously offered what they could – an old bed in a corrugated tin shed with no electricity, heat, running water or even an outhouse. Yours truly was truly humbled by the graciousness of all my host families, but I had to readjust my American comfort level in order to get the most out of these experiences.

While it’s certainly true that a “man’s home is his castle,” my personal motto is “research your homestay to avoid a hassle.”

Global Travel Guru