John, Public Affairs Specialist
My name is John and I'm a Public Affairs Specialist.
The day that mattered most to me when I was an intern at the U.S. Embassy in Maseru, Lesotho. I was working on the Ambassador's Self-Help Fund, which was to go visit remote villages throughout the country and to evaluate village's proposals that they would send to the embassy to get small grants for projects. There was one that stuck out the most to me which is when I went to go visit a village, it was late in the afternoon, and we stumbled upon an older woman who said we were at the right location, and she says, "My daughter submitted an application."
The young girl submitted an application because she wanted young girls who were vulnerable, children, to learn life skills. So, she wanted to create a dressmaking school, so she was just asking for funding for sewing machines and material so she could start her school. After I left it was like, wow. I was one person, but I was representing the United States government and it really hit home and to me — it made a huge difference just seeing how a young woman with such a small part can do such a big thing.
I joined the Department five years ago as a student. I was just in high school and I was just doing a student program and I started working in the Department and I was like wow, this is really neat, just meeting all these people ambassadors and people that are pretty high up in the foreign service — just understanding their career and it really inspired me to say, maybe this is what I want to do in life.
The skills that I retained definitely during my internship prepared me to where I am now. I was able to learn the writing process at the embassy, which was a little bit different from like the private sector.