Families Across Borders program begins at Southeast

This summer Southeast Missouri State University's Home Stay Program for international students was discontinued and replaced by a new program called Families Across Borders in order to better satisfy students' needs.

Previously the home stay program required an eight-week commitment from the family to have an Intensive English Program student live with them while he or she studied at Southeast. Typically, there were about eight to 10 families signed up to host students. However, the problem was there were many more students that wanted to be a part of the Home Stay Program but couldn't due to the lack of families willing to make that commitment, assistant director for international programming Suzanne Omran said.

"They lived in their home and ate dinners with them," Omran said. "I mean, it was fantastic, but we had so many more students who wanted to be involved with that and so we started looking at it from the perspective of, you know, how can we provide a better service to our students while also lessening the load on community members and, therefore, hopefully transitioning it to where more community members could be involved."

Families Across Borders is the solution the Office of International Education Services came up with to reduce the hefty commitment into a program that was less intense.

The program is designed to match a student with a family through an application process based on several factors including interests, dietary restrictions, number of pets, number of children in the family, housing and much more. Both the student and the family fill out an application and Omran matches them based on the information provided.

"It's a pretty in-depth application," Omran said. "We also ask for references. I want to be able to check. If I don't know who this person is I want to be able to call somebody and say, 'Hey, is this somebody I want our students to be exposed to or, you know, is there some type of ulterior motive?' You just never know, so it's better to be safe than sorry."

Once the student and family are paired together by Omran, she gives each party the contact information for one another, but it's the family's responsibility to reach out to the student, Omran said.

The main difference between the Home Stay Program and Families Across Borders is the student is not living with the family but instead meeting up with the family a couple times a month. Families are asked to commit to at least one semester of spending time with their student.

"I ask them to have no less than two contacts per month, so whether it's dinners or taking them to the 'Gone Girl' premiere or a First Friday or just 'Hey, come over and watch television,' whatever," Omran said. "It's entirely up to them. That way the family and the student both have the ability to say, 'You know what, I'm just really not feeling it tonight. How about we do something next week?' or 'We had something come up with the family, we're not available this week. Can we do something two weeks from now?'"

After having a soft launch in the summer, there are currently five students and families paired up through Families Across Borders. Omran said students do not have to be a part of Families Across Borders, but she hopes to get more students involved as well as more families.

"Utilizing some of my community contacts from the office, I think we'll be able to expand the program pretty rapidly and get more students involved," Omran said.

For students or community members interested in becoming involved with Families Across Borders, contact Omran via email at somran@semo.edu or by phone at (573) 986-6751.