If you are interested in hosting an international student, the first step is to contact our office on 1300 884 733. If it is your first time hosting a student, our staff will organise for one of our coordinators to meet with you and your family in your home for an interview. The interview is a way for us to get to know each other, for you to learn more about the role of host family and for WEP to ensure that your family and home are suitable to host a student.

At the interview you will be asked to provide contact details for three referees who know your family well; two of whom know you in your family environment. These referees will be telephoned and asked standard questions to ensure the home and family are suitable for a young person to live in.

Once accepted, host families are sent profiles of several students we think are suited to your family in terms of interests, personality and background. The family should take time to discuss these students and how you think each student would fit in to the family. Although WEP staff are happy to assist if desired, the final decision as to which student a family hosts is left up to the family.

At some stage during this process you will also be asked to complete a host family profile. It is a big step to live with a new family in a foreign country and our international students and their families are keen to get to know as much about the host family as possible. The host family profile is an excellent starting point for achieving this.

Once you have been matched with one particular student it is time to start corresponding. Over the coming months you can send each other letters, postcards and emails, and speak on the phone so that you know each other a little better when the student arrives. In the meantime, WEP Australia will organise to enrol the student in the local high school and will appoint a local coordinator if this has not already been done.

Click here for more information on becoming a host.

Myriam Vanderzwalem from Belgium on Port Douglas beach.