F OCUS - American Foreign Service Association

AFSANEWS
American Foreign Service Association • April 2009
ANNUAL HOMECOMING FOR RETIREES MAY 1
Join AFSA for Foreign Affairs Day
AFSA welcomes all State Department retirees to the annual
homecoming event, Foreign Affairs Day, on May 1.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will deliver
the keynote address.
The AFSA Memorial Plaque ceremony takes place during
Foreign Affairs Day to honor those Foreign Service personnel
who have lost their lives while serving their country abroad.
As part of AFSA’s effort to add names that have been overlooked,
three “older” names will be unveiled during this year’s
ceremony: Edmund Roberts (1784-1836), a special envoy sent
by President Andrew Jackson to negotiate a treaty with Japan,
who died of dysentery in Macau while en route; Thomas W.
Waldron (1814-1844), the first U.S. consul in Hong Kong,
who died of cholera while visiting Macau; and Felix Russell
Engdahl (1907-1942), U.S. consul in Shanghai, who died in a
Japanese internment camp.
The ceremony will be held at the site of the Memorial
Plaques in the State Department’s C Street lobby.
Foreign Affairs Day invitations were mailed out in early
March. If you haven’t received yours yet, please e-mail the following
information to foreignaffairsday@state.gov: last name,
first name, retirement date, whether you are Civil Service or
Foreign Service, street address, phone number and e-mail address.
All State Department retirees are cordially invited to a reception
hosted by AFSA from 3 to 5 p.m. at the newly renovated
AFSA headquarters, 2101 E Street NW, across from the
department. There will be a hosted bar and a scholarship ceremony.
Please stop by to reconnect with colleagues and catch
up on the latest Foreign Service news. ❏
OVERSEAS POSTS RECEIVE FUNDING FOR LIBRARIES
Professional Development Initiative: Pilot Phase Complete
AFSA successfully completed the pilot phase of its Professional
Development Initiative with the final approval of
a total of $5,000 in grants to 47 Foreign Service missions.
These grants have been used at each post to create the nucleus
of a Professional Reading Library to be maintained permanently.
The funding, which was provided by the Una Chapman
Cox Foundation, was disbursed to the State Department’s Ralph
J. Bunche Library and to the following posts:
• EUR: Adana, Athens, Belgrade, Bucharest, Frankfurt,
Geneva, Kyiv, Lisbon, London, Moscow, Naples, Oslo,
Rome, Valletta, Zagreb
• AF: Abidjan, Accra, Asmara, Lilongwe, Lusaka,
Nairobi, Niamey, Ouagadougou, Praia
• WHA: Bogota, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Ciudad
Juarez, Hermosillo, Merida, Monterrey, Montreal,
Panama
• EAP: Guangzhou, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City,
Hong Kong, Jakarta, Rangoon
• NEA: Cairo, Doha, Muscat, Rabat, Sana’a
• SA: Chennai, Hyderabad, Karachi
Each post matched AFSA’s $100 grant with at least an equal
amount. The funds were used to purchase books featured on
the Foreign Affairs Professional Reading List that AFSA President
John Naland and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs
William Burns co-sponsored in June 2008. That reading
list is a key resource for career-long, self-directed professional
development for employees of the foreign affairs agencies. It
can be viewed on AFSA’s Web site at www.afsa.org/reading
list.cfm and is also on the State Department’s intranet site. Since
it was posted, the list has been one of the most visited pages on
both of those sites, with a combined total of more
than 11,000 page views.
The 47 overseas posts that applied for AFSA cofunding
are now using the books that they purchased
in their local Professional Development Discussion
Groups (book clubs). Collectively, the 47 book clubs
have 507 members. One group recently reported,
“Our club meets monthly and we read roughly one
book every two to three months.”
Continued on page 43
A P R I L 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 39