EIL Intercultural Learning / AFS Ireland is committed to ensuring that all our communications and dealings with participants, volunteers, hosts, members, the general public, our supporters and all who engage with us are of the highest possible standard. We listen and respond to the views so that we can continue to improve. We welcome both positive and negative feedback. Therefore we aim to ensure that:

● it is as easy as possible to make a complaint;

● we treat any clear expression of dissatisfaction with our operations which calls for a response as a complaint;

● we treat it seriously and we deal with it quickly and politely;

● we respond accordingly – for example, with an explanation, or an apology where we have got things wrong, and information on any action taken, and

● we learn from complaints, use them to improve, and monitor them at Board level.

If you have feedback or a complaint you can make use of one of the options below:

Option 1 – Raising an Issue

As a first step we invite you to raise concerns and feedback in an informal way directly with your EIL contact staff/representative. We encourage issues to be resolved at this level as far as possible. If you complain in person or over the phone, we will try to resolve the issues there and then or as quickly as possible afterwards.

Option 2 – Escalation Process

If you prefer not to engage in Option 1 above or you are not happy with our response, you may initiate a more formal process by writing to [email protected]. Please provide us with as much information as possible and let us know how you would like us to respond, providing relevant contact details. All complaints submitted to this address are brought to the attention of the CEO and the Chairperson of the Board. EIL commits to reviewing each complaint thoroughly and to responding to all complaints in a timely manner.

We will do everything we can to put things right and will review our procedures where necessary to stop problems happening again.

This process for lodging complaints does not apply to EIL’s staff or volunteers, who have separate procedures for lodging any complaints. The process for staff is outlined in the EIL Staff Handbook and the process for volunteers is outlined in the EIL Volunteer Policy Adopted by the Board on October 29th 2020.