Why host international students: 5 benefits for the whole family

Hosting an international student sounds, at first, like a favour you’re doing for someone else: a spare bedroom you weren’t using, three meals a day for a week, a stranger sleeping under your roof. The reality, talking to families who have been doing this with us for years, is the opposite. What the household receives is almost always more than what it puts in.

Here are five real benefits of hosting in Gorey — for the whole household, not just the student.

1. A real reason to use a language at home

Your kids spend years studying Spanish, French or Italian at school without ever using it outside the classroom. The day a student from Madrid, Verona or Warsaw sits down at your kitchen table, that changes overnight. Suddenly there’s a real reason to use the language — explaining dinner, asking about the film, telling them about the day. It isn’t an exercise: it’s a conversation. And kids, especially the younger ones, soak it up without realising.

Many of our host families tell us their own kids end up visiting “their” student the following summer. What started as one week of hosting becomes an exchange that lasts for years.

2. A more lively house, with no long-term commitment

Hosting isn’t adopting. Most of our students come for one or two-week programmes, and you choose the weeks that suit you. So for that week the house is a bit busier — more conversation at dinner, someone to walk the dog with, a reason to dust off the recipe your mother used to make.

And then, when they go home, you go back to your routine. No permanently occupied bedrooms, no long-term commitments. Only the weeks you say yes to.

3. A cultural exchange without getting on a plane

It’s a strange way to travel — without leaving the house. The kitchen smells of things you’ve never cooked. The music your daughter plays in the car is from an Italian band you’d never have heard of otherwise. They tell you what a first communion looks like in Spain, how All Saints’ Day is celebrated in Poland, what really happens at the Verona Carnival. And you tell them about hurling, about the salt-roasted potatoes from the Atlantic coast, about the legends of Glendalough, and why the Irish don’t actually call it “tea time”.

It isn’t tourist-y. It’s what comes through the front door when a curious teenager is willing to tell you about their world.

4. Community: you become part of something bigger than your house

When a family in Gorey starts hosting, it doesn’t happen quietly. You meet other hosts at welcome dinners, at end-of-programme farewell BBQs, at the team gatherings. You become — almost without noticing — part of a small community of people in Gorey and around who have been doing this for years, who know each other, and who share stories, advice and, occasionally, students.

For a lot of host parents, that circle is one of the least expected gifts of hosting.

5. You’re contributing to the town, almost without realising

This is the one that rarely gets said out loud, but it’s real: every family that opens a spare room is keeping the local economy of Gorey moving. Students don’t stay shut indoors — they eat in the cafés, buy in the shops in town, fill bus seats, join sports clubs that need numbers, and leave money behind with surf instructors at Courtown, guides at Glendalough and local drivers.

When there are enough host families, we can bring more groups. When we bring more groups, the town has more activity. And when the town has more activity, Gorey stays the open, connected, lively place it has been for decades.

Hosting is, with no great mystery, a very direct way of looking after your town.

What we ask of you

To host with us all you need is:

• A spare bedroom (single, or shared with another student of the same gender) within walking or short driving distance of Gorey town centre.
• Three meals a day during the stay (breakfast, packed lunch and a hot dinner).
• A welcoming environment in which English is the everyday language at home.
• Garda vetting — we cover the process and the costs.
• A house visit by our team before your first hosting.

In return: careful student-family matching, 24/7 support during programmes, an accessible local team, and a community of experienced host families to lean on.

Sign up to host

If you live in Gorey, Co. Wexford or nearby and have a spare room available during the year or over the summer, leave us your details below. We’ll get back to you within one working day to arrange a friendly chat, answer any questions you have and — if it feels right — set up a house visit.