Apply by March 4 for U.S. Department of State Fall 2010 Student Internship Program

The U.S. Department of State Student Internship Program website has more information, and allows you to view the vacancy on USAJobs and start the online application process. Please note that the deadline to submit completed applications is March 04, 2010. 

This internship could jumpstart your career in the international relations, public diplomacy, and foreign affairs fields. Read the article below from a career foreign service officer who is blind. It was featured in a 2008 issue of Careers and the Disabled magazine.

People with Disabilities Change the Face of U.S. Diplomacy
By Avraham Rabby

It was once unheard of for people with disabilities to serve in the U.S. Foreign Service representing the U.S. government and American citizens around the world. When I was selected to serve as a Foreign Service Officer, no blind person had ever done it. Now, many people with all kinds of disabilities have a career in the Foreign Service. I went into the service with the goal of serving on every continent possible. I was willing to be very flexible in the type of assignments I took in order to meet this goal, and I completed seven assignments on five continents. What an incredibly fulfilling and wonderful ride it was!

My career began as a junior officer working at the American Embassy in London England. I did consular work granting (or denying) visas to foreign nationals wanting to travel to the United States before taking my next post, also in London, as a political officer. I met almost daily with officials of “Her Majesty’s Government” (yes, that’s the way the Brits refer to it) at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and reporting to Washington D.C. on Britain’s activities ranging from its relations with Latin America to the electoral prospects of the Liberal Democrat Party.

I never imagined the historic events I would take part in during my time in the Foreign Service. After leaving London, I went to the American Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa. My primary responsibilities were reporting on the human rights situation and the state of South Africa’s relations with the African continent. I had one of the most moving experiences of my life serving as an official international observer during South Africa’s first post-apartheid election, which brought Nelson Mandela to power as South Africa’s President. From a disability perspective, the new constitution not only promoted racial equality, it also banned discrimination against people with disabilities. This new parity led to the election of disabled activists to serve on South Africa’s first all-democratic parliament.

Inspired by my time in South Africa, I moved to Washington D.C. to continue working on human rights issues in a new role as a regional desk officer in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. I monitored both the human rights and labor rights situations in South American and southern African countries. Working in the nation’s capital gave me first-hand experience at making U.S. foreign policy, as opposed to carrying out U.S. foreign policy in our embassies.

Later assignments involved further human rights and political work at the American embassies in Peru, the twin-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago, and at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York where I was responsible for a resolution, adopted unanimously by the UN General Assembly, to provide reasonable accommodations for disabled delegates negotiating the now enacted International Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. 

Everyone’s career in the Service is unique, and the range of opportunities is even broader than my own path. Generally, people entering the Service can be placed in one of five distinct “cones”, or families of jobs, in the U.S. Foreign Service depending upon their experience, skills and interests: political, economic, public diplomacy, management and consular. For example, while I served in political positions, I also accepted a post in New Delhi, India, in public diplomacy. I arranged television and radio coverage of U.S. embassy events, oversaw the screening of educational videos about the United States for the Indian public, and managed people-to-people dialogues between Indian and American grassroots citizen groups through digital video conferences. One of these conferences brought together the U.S. Paralympics Organization in Colorado Springs, Colorado with 100 Indian people with disabilities interested in disabled sports.

Since 1990 when the U.S. Department of State began accepting applicants with disabilities into the Foreign Service, the Department has generally bent over backwards to provide disabled Foreign Service candidates and employees with the accommodations necessary to enable them to compete on equal footing with their non-disabled peers. In my own case, for example, the Department of State purchased whatever specialized computer hardware and software I needed. In addition, at each of the posts where I served, the State Department hired a full-time personal assistant who was available to assist me at all times during the working day to maximize my productivity and efficiency. This included reading the daily newspapers and other documents to me, typing and formatting cables at my dictation, conducting Internet research and accompanying me to meetings as needed.

Though progress is being made, disabled Foreign Service employees still have some obstacles and challenges to overcome. Although, I was fortunate enough to have had a fulfilling career, I needed to be diligent to ensure hiring managers did not rule me out of consideration in the assignments process because I am blind. What I encountered among my superiors, co-workers and those reporting to me was the same range of attitudes toward my disability – both positive and negative, both socially accepting and socially distant – as I would expect to encounter anywhere else. As more people with disabilities join the Foreign Service, these hurdles will be replaced with commonplace experience and greater understanding. 

Learn More about the Foreign Service
If you are ready for a Foreign Service career or would like to find out more about the kind of work you can do in the service, visit the U.S. Department of State’s website at http://careers.state.gov. Internships are also available both in Washington, D.C. and at U.S. embassies and consulates overseas. The U.S. Department of State Student Internship Program website has more information, and allows you to view the vacancy on USAJobs and start the online application process. Please note that the deadline to submit completed applications is March 04, 2010.