Homestay Staff Professional Development Workshop
Niagara-on-the-Lake, November 13, 2025

You’re invited to attend this full-day workshop dedicated fully to helping homestay staff to achieve their goals, share ideas and network with colleagues. For the past decade, ESQ Educational Services have been running informative and educational workshops.

Speakers and Issues

We are thrilled to announce that we have an outstanding group of homestay experts to facilitate our sessions. Some of the topics we will be covering include:

Conflict Resolution

Jennifer Robin Wilson, author of the Heart of Homestay: Jennifer will be speaking about helping hosts and students to avoid conflicts and ways to resolve them when they do arise. She has been working in the homestay sector for more than two decades.

Recruiting and Retaining Hosts

Doug Ronson will discuss why there is a shortage of hosts across North America. He will explain how programs can retain existing hosts by preventing burnout. He will share ideas on how to recruit new, high-quality hosts. Doug has worked in homestay for many years and is the author of The Essential Guide for Homestay Hosts.

Intercultural Competency

Gillian Aitken of Niagara College will address ways you can help hosts to become more interculturally aware so that they can deal with students from a variety of countries and address a wide range of challenges. Gillian is responsible for homestay at the college in her role as International Student Housing and Settlement Advisor.

Supporting student mental health

Laura Fakla of Niagara College will discuss how to identify student mental health issues and strategies to help those experiencing declining mental health. 

Who should attend

• Homestay coordinators and managers
• International education staff responsible for homestay
• Directors of homestay organizations

Register now

Registration is just $340 plus tax. We offer a discount of $20 per person if your organization registers more than one person. 

The workshop fee includes the professional development sessions, coffee breaks and lunch. To register, simply send us an email (doug at collegestreet.ca) and we will invoice you.

Accommodations

Available hotels include White Oaks Resort. Rooms cost $259 plus tax.