The Foreign Service Journal, February 2013

38 FEBRUARY 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL AFSA NEWS The Importance of Community STATE VP VOICE | BY DANIEL HIRSCH AFSA NEWS Views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the AFSA State VP. AFSA continues to work with the department to improve policies for transportation and evacuation of pets, and their inclusion in post plan- ning for crises and emergen- cies. Some of our members wonder why we focus time and resources on such mat- ters. Or to put it another way: why should AFSA or the State Department care about pets, your spouse, your kids or your 1968 mint-condition, candy-apple-red Mustang? To me, the short answer to all of these questions is the same: “Because it is in the interest of the Foreign Service to do so.” A Foreign Service career asks its members to spend nearly their entire working lives travelling from post to post overseas. There are other agencies that ask their members to live overseas for a two-year stint here, or a four-year stint there, followed by equal time in the U.S. And others require their members to change duty stations, both in the U.S. and overseas, regularly. But the Foreign Service asks more than any other with regard to spending the bulk of a career, and of a life- time, moving between posts that are truly foreign. Moving from a military base in Germany to one in Kuwait is a big deal, and a lifetime of doing so is ardu- ous. But one is essentially moving from one fairly large community, with many of the comforts, sights and sounds of America, to another. Typi- cally, one can go all day in such places without having to speak any language but English. One can watch the latest American TV shows, eat lunch at Pizza Hut, shop in stores that sell American goods, send the kids on a yel- low school bus to an Ameri- can-curriculum school, and get together with American PTA members to talk about how they’re doing. You can’t do all of that in Ulaanbaatar, or Ashgabat, or even Monte- video. Many Foreign Service families spend most of their lives without ever experienc- ing something most Ameri- cans take for granted: an American community. Community is an extremely important com- ponent of morale, and, for many people, a dealmaker or breaker when choosing a career. It is also, for lack of a better way of putting it, one of the things that keeps us “American,” and helps us rep- resent the American people, when we are far from home. Community provides consis- tency in a career where many things change frequently. It helps our children grow up American, with ties to our own country, and plays a healing role in making people feel secure and helping them deal with stress. In the Foreign Service, we make our own community at every post we move to. Typi- cally, it is small and transient, and is rarely everything we would want a community to be. But it is what we have. And it is all the community the U.S. government can offer to a prospective Foreign Service candidate, or a tal- ented FS member it wishes to retain. Our community includes family members. In AFSA surveys, our members have repeatedly indicated that family concerns matter more to them than any other con- sideration in choosing a post, or choosing to remain in the Service. Community also includes the things that make a home a home, the intangibles that remind Americans overseas of their homes back in the States, such as the Mustang you have taken with you from post to post. And whether one considers a companion animal to be a family mem- ber, a possession or merely a fellow traveler, it plays an enormous role in employee satisfaction and morale. Transporting pets, or dealing with them in emer- gencies, costs money. So does transporting or storing an employee’s household effects. So do vaccinations, school fees, bassinet ship- ments and travel of children of separated parents. The government pays for all of these things not because it likes you, but because it recognizes that recruiting the best and the brightest entails enabling people to live all over the world with the things that matter the most to them. If pets are what matter most to a significant number of Foreign Service members and prospective candidates, then AFSA, and the State Department, should care about pets. After all, they are part of our community. n Our community includes family members. In AFSA surveys, our members have repeatedly indicated that family concerns matter more to them than any other consideration in choosing a post, or choosing to remain in the Service.