Sunday, March 8, 2009

Cultural Care Agency Recipient of 2009 Au Pair of the Year Award

For the second year in a row, an au pair from Cultural Care Au Pair Agency has received the International Au Pair Association (IAPA) Au Pair of the Year Award.

Out of nearly 50,000 au pairs worldwide, Ricardo, a male au pair from Brazil, has been awarded the prestigious award as a result of his dedication to the care of the special needs son of a Richmond, VA host family. He will be traveling to Vienna, Austria to receive this very special honor.

We will report more details of this breaking news story after the award is presented at the IAPA conference that takes place at the end of March.

Last year, Linda Falter, a German au pair (also from Cultural Care), received the award for the special and dedicated service she gave to her California host family.
Read about her at www.aupairclearinghouse.com

IAPA is the global trade association for qualified au pair agencies and companies, and since 2004, their Au Pair of the Year award has highlighted the positive impact au pairs have had on their host families. Each year, IAPA receives thousands of nominations, from host families worldwide, who believe their au pair to be deserving of this honor.

We are very excited to get the news before the actual press release and awards ceremony and we send our congratulations to Cultural Care, Ricardo and his very lucky family!

2 comments:

  1. Hi. I am sure this au pair from Brazil is wonderful, but I am surprised that Cultural Care won again. They have so many complaints on the internet - compared to other agencies, it is a bit unnerving to say the least! How can you really know which agency is good? I read your website, aupairclearinghouse, and you list three top industry leaders - are there really any big differences between them?

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  2. Hi Nina.

    Yes, it is true, Cultural Care has had its share of complaints and I wrote about that here in my blog and I also published two news stories on troubling incidents that are still unfolding (court trials still pending). You can read about them at www.aupairclearinghouse.com under Current News Stories.

    The Top Three Industry Leaders are all sound agencies and you cannot go wrong with any of them. Cultural Care and Au Pair in America both have over 20 years experience in the au pair industry and AuPairCare is emerging as an excellent agency that is careful to grow at a good, steady rate (and not expand too fast - which seems to be the problem with Cultural Care - and this rapid growth appears to be having a negative affect on their screening of au pairs and customer service).

    AuPairCare has an award winning online matching program and their Specialized Infant Program is a terrific idea. There is a growing number of young host families with infants and au pairs need to be trained in this area!

    AuPairCare is on the right track with this specialized program. They also have the best phone service! If you read the list on my website (Top Industry Leaders) we didn't list any weaknesses because we couldn't find any!

    One of our favorite programs is Expert
    AuPair - located in Florida. It is a small, family run agency that has their eye on slow, careful growth and customer service is very important to them. They have started to expand their services into different parts of the country.

    Thank you for your postive comments - we are happy you not only enjoy our work, but learn from the website and blog also.

    You can feel confident that any of the 12 agencies we list on our website would be great for your family, depending on where you live (not all agencies service all of the nation).

    If you pick from our Top Three Industry Picks - you really cannot go wrong!

    Good luck and let us know what agency you chose and how it went!

    Warm regards,

    Edina

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