What Do Host Families Do?
We expect host families to welcome students from overseas as their ‘short-term home’ and help them get used to the new environment. This includes supports such as showing them practical things such as where to obtain a SIM card, the location of the nearest train station/bus stops and taking them to the local shopping center.
Furthermore, as we want students to feel comfortable during their homestay experience, we ask host families to give a little effort to have some casual communications just asking how’s their day going or if they need any help. With the same reason, we also ask the host families to speak English as a common language at most of the time while hosting the students.
Do Host Families Need to Cook for Students?
Most of our students request the meal option which can be either Half-Board or Full-Board. See the chart below for the specification for each option.
| Half-Board | Breakfast and Dinner Monday to Friday 3 meals on weekends and public holidays |
|---|---|
| Full-Board | 3 meals every day |
Please note that we expect all our host families to have a dinner together with students to provide them an opportunity to practice English and to have closer relationships with the host family.
What Do I Need to Start Hosting?
We have set up our own requirements and guidelines to ensure that the students can have safe and satisfactory homestay experience. Below are some of key requirements that we ask hosts to provide while accommodating students.
Student’s Room
For every student we require a host family to provide a fully furnished private room with the following:
- Bed (This cannot be inflatable air bed/mattresses) and bedding including linen, blanket and pillow, and a bath towel
- Adequately sized storage to store their belongings (e.g. drawer, wardrobe or closet)
- A study desk and a chair,
- Adequate light, heating (this cannot be a hot water bottle nor extra blankets) and ventilation
Accessibility
We ask host family to provide every student an access to the following:
- House Key
- Private or shared bathroom (toilet paper must be prepared)
- Living room
- Laundry facility and cleaning equipment (e.g. vacuum cleaner)
- Kitchen and kitchenware to prepare light meals
- Unlimited Wi-Fi with adequate speed.
For accessibility to electricity, water and gas, we understand that the costs cover these expenses can be quite expensive, so we advise host families to make a house rule upon student’s arrival.
We also ask host families to maintain their shared area in a clean and functioning condition so that the students can comfortably use them.
For all other the equipment that the students would require while staying over at host family such as shampoo, toothbrush, and sanitary are to be covered at student’s own expense.