For the first time, finding aids for fifty-six World War I and II
collections at the Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural
Programs (AFS Archives) are searchable online on AFS’s Web site: www.afs.org/afs-history-and-archives.
The unprecedented availability of the collections was made possible through
a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission
(NHPRC.) This grant allowed AFS to survey 175 cubic feet of archival
material, arrange, describe, and preserve collections at a basic level, and to
create a Web site where researchers can easily browse subject terms, creators,
record groups, and fifty-six new finding aids. The finding aids are now
also catalogued in regional and national databases.
The AFS Archives contains documents, photographs, works of art, recordings,
and artifacts related to the history and development of the organization that
is now referred to as AFS Intercultural Programs, Inc. AFS began as a
voluntary ambulance and camion corps serving with the French Army during the
First World War. The ambulance service was reactivated during World War
II, and American volunteers drove ambulances in France, North Africa, the
Middle East, Italy, Germany, India, and Burma, and carried over 700,000
casualties by the end of the war. Today, AFS is an international exchange
organization for students and young adults that operates in more than eighty
countries, and organizes and supports intercultural learning experiences.
Read more here.