FF International

Quick Look:

The Friendship Force is an international non-profit organization founded to promote friendship, goodwill and understanding among the world's people. The organization creates an environment where personal friendships can be established through international home stay exchanges.  

The Friendship Force achieves its goals through the travel of goodwill ambassadors to pre-assigned destinations. In each city, the ambassadors share the lives of their host families for one week.  

Established in 1977 by Wayne Smith with the support of President and Mrs. Jimmy Carter, Friendship Force has grown into an organization of 50,000 members in 58 countries. There are nearly 350 clubs around the world with about 135 clubs in the United States. The headquarters of Friendship Force International is in Atlanta with George Brown as President.

The Dallas club was established in 1994 and now has membership of over 100 people from all walks of life - professionals, seniors, singles, couples, families - anyone who loves to meet new friends at home and abroad.  The club has enjoyed wonderful outbound exchanges to Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Brazil, Chile, England, Cuba, Japan, Belgium, Germany, Croatia and Columbia; this year we plan to visit Costa Rica. We have hosted clubs from Germany four times, Chile, Latvia (twice), Peru (twice), Brazil, Japan (twice), England, Canada and Romania.

For more information about Friendship Force International, club contacts and trips offered, please see their webpage at www.thefriendshipforce.org.  

See Friendship Force History.

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Scams/Security

Dated 2/9/09:   Recently we have had reports of emails purporting to be from bona fide Friendship Force members requesting money to get home. These emails are as a result of our members' email accounts having been hacked into and taken over by criminals.

The criminal pretends to be a fellow member and emails everyone in their contact list.

THESE EMAILS ARE SCAMS. DO NOT WIRE ANYONE MONEY THROUGH WESTERN UNION OR ANY OTHER FINANCIAL INSTITUTION AS A RESULT OF ONE OF THESE EMAILS.

We regret anyone being inconvenienced by one of these emails, however FFI takes your privacy seriously, we do not sell our contact lists and we cloak all emails in our communications to our members as much as possible. We continue to look for ways to ensure your privacy.

When traveling with Friendship Force and you have a true emergency you should always first contact your Exchange Director, our emergency number (404 522 9490 ext. 375), the relevant Consulate and your Program Coordinator.

Here are some tips to keep your email account safe:

From Easy Website presentation at 2009 SW Conference:

Facebook

Many Friendship Force people are signing on to Facebook - just type in Facebook on your top line of your browser and you will be taken to the Facebook website to join or sign in if you are already a member. It lets you share photos with friends, with people you have stayed with, with club members. Share exchange photos and keep in touch worldwide. There are groups within Facebook, and one of them is a Friendship Force group. You can set up your own group too.

With any social sharing site, just be careful what you put on there. Theoretically, you are allowing only your friends whom you have approved to see what you put there, but actually their friends may see some of your postings too. 

There have been cases of scams and people defrauded when their Facebook password was used to steal their identity. People can assume your identity, change your password and appeal to your friends for “emergency” money. This problem occurs if you respond to a request on your e-mail for information or click on a link taking you to a scammer’s site. That’s really where you need to be careful. When you get a request on your e-mail from an organization, bank or company that looks familiar to you, do not click on a reply link. Respond if you wish by going to that company’s website or use your own address book. That request could come from someone mimicking that company and providing you with a link to their scamming address; you may not be talking to the company you think you are. Reputable companies do not ask for information online that would compromise your identity. Beware of any that do.

Privacy

When the whole world sees you, you need to weigh what you put on your website. We (in Dallas) don’t print our members’ phone numbers or home addresses. If a meeting is in a private home, we provide an e-mail address as contact to get the address. We figure if the viewer is seeing this on the Internet, he or she has e-mail and can use that to contact a person mentioned on our site. An e-mail address does not identify location of the person or confidential information; however, some people object even to using their e-mail address or last name in a newsletter or website. If you have a member who objects, respect their privacy.

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Rebranding Friendship Force

To: Friendship Force Club and Exchange Leaders
From: George Brown
Date: June 13, 2008
Re: New Website launches on 16 June!

On Monday, June 16, at 12:00 pm Atlanta time, FFI will launch the new Friendship Force website. The web address will be the same (www.thefriendshipforce.org), but it will have an entirely new look, reflecting the re-branding initiative that is part of our strategic plan. I invite all of you to take a look at the website in the days ahead and let us know what you think. It will be a “work in progress” for a while as we continue to make improvements.

As you and your members become familiar with the website, there are several features that I want to emphasize:

1. GETTING THE WORLD’S ATTENTION
We all know that FFI has a great story to tell. We also know that we live in an age of information technology. So, we are going to maximize our piece of cyberspace by using our website to help us get the word out about our organization and its activities. Our new homepage is designed to be fun, attractive and interesting to our members and to the general public.

2. ATTRACTING EXCHANGE PARTICIPANTS
The website will be useful in getting the word out about Exchanges. Here’s what the terminology means:
Featured Exchanges provides a sample of upcoming exchanges that are open to applicants from outside the originating club. Currently these exchanges originate in the USA but anyone, anywhere in the world, may apply. We will also be adding exchanges of interest to members from other regions in the future.

In addition to the Featured Exchanges we still have the “All Exchanges” listing as well as “Find an Exchange,” both of which provide a full listing of our exchange activity for 2008 and 2009.

3. WEB-SITE VIDEOS
We’re entering the age of web-videos with the new website, providing the opportunity to include short videos for those with fast internet connections. The new website includes the video about the new logo and strategic plan that was sent to all club presidents.

4. VISIT THE FFI STORE
We have an on-line Friendship Force store for the first time. You can order merchandise with the new FF logo directly from an internet supply house called “Café Press”. In the weeks ahead we’ll be adding additional merchandise items including a standard logo lapel pin — that will be supplied from FFI in Atlanta. In July we will provide guidelines to clubs on how to use the new logo in their own materials or merchandise.

5. PRIVATE HOMEPAGE FOR FF LEADERSHIP ONLY
One of the most important features of the new website is a special section for club and exchange leaders. This new leadership section is much stronger. And to avoid confusion for members and the general public who may be using the website to learn about FFI, a password will be required for the leadership section. We want all active FF leaders — both club and exchange leaders—to have access to this section, which we’re calling the Leadership Forum, so the password is very easy to remember:

The user name is FFI; the password is friendship.
We are asking that club presidents give the password to exchange directors and other leaders who may have need of forms, manuals and other leadership information. The Leadership Forum section is also designed to be interactive, providing a way for you to communicate with each other and with the FFI staff on an ongoing basis, using “blogs” (web-logs). This means you can enter comments and suggestions that can be seen by FF leaders around the world. Give it a try! Or you can send an email directly to me through the website in the “Talk to George” section. I think it will be fun and also very productive.

6. NEW NAME FOR OUR MONTHLY E-MAIL TO YOU
Since we will now be calling our entire leadership section in the website Leadership Forum, the name of our monthly communication which you have been receiving by that name will now be called the “FFI Communiqué.” We’ll continue to send this via e-mail, with back issues saved on the website in the leadership section.

If you’re like me, this new technology can be quite confusing. But there is no doubt that the Internet is a tremendously powerful tool for a global organization like FFI. In addition to providing the world access to our story and our programs, it also enables us to greatly improve communications between FFI and our clubs. It won’t always go just the way we want, but we can learn together and in the process create a much more efficient and effective international organization. I’m looking forward to working with you to make this a reality!

Staying in Touch

UPDATE JANUARY 1, 2011: 

The Friendship Force International (FFI) office has moved to 127 Peachtree St., Suite 501, Atlanta, GA 30303.  Tel:  404-522-9490 or 9490; e-mail: ffi@thefriendshipforce.org or www.friendshipforce.org. 

George Brown is President of FFI and Debbie Powell is our Program Service Coordinator in Atlanta.  

Check the webpage for Friendship Force International news, all exchanges, clubs around the world,  products for sale and the Friendship Magazine.

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2011 FF International Exchanges - First Half Year Summary

A total of 1,875 Friendship Force ambassadors participated in 101 exchanges during the first half of 2011. These numbers are very similar to last year, even with the cancellation of 11 exchanges due to the tragedy of the Japanese tsunami. 

Among the highlights:

Important “firsts”: