The Foreign Service Journal, September 2019

66 SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL AFSA NEWS AFSA Recognizes Foreign Service Youth AFSA joined the Foreign Service Youth Foundation, the Associates of the American Foreign Service Worldwide and the Family Liaison Office in honoring excellence in Foreign Service youth at the 2019 Youth Awards Cer- emony, which took place on June 26 in the State Depart- ment’s George C. Marshall Center. For the second year in a row AFSA awarded $129,000 in merit awards, divided among 38 students. This is the highest amount ever given in AFSAmerit awards, and the highest number of students so honored. Director General of the Foreign Service and Director of Human Resources Carol Z. Perez was the keynote speaker at the event. She read aloud a letter of con- gratulations from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Ambassador Barbara Stephenson, president of AFSA at the time, presented AFSA’s Merit Awards to the 12 recipients who joined us on the day of the ceremony. In 2019 Youth Awards winners pose with then AFSA President Ambassador Barbara Stephenson (2nd from left). Ambassador Barbara Stephenson presents an academic merit scholar- ship to Aimee Dastin-van Rijn. Youth Awards winners (left to right) Charlotte Lanser, India Eddy and Margaret Moore. AFSA/JOAQUINSOSA AFSA/JOAQUINSOSA AFSA/JOAQUINSOSA judge this year’s Merit Schol- arship submissions. For more information on AFSA’s Scholarship Program please visit www.afsa.org/ scholar or email scholar@ afsa.org . Detailed informa- tion on all of the 2019 Merit Scholarship recipients can be found in the July-August issue of The Foreign Service Journal . n her remarks Amb. Stephen- son praised the achievements of the recipients and lauded the resilience displayed by children of Foreign Service families. Each year AFSA confers 41 merit scholarships in the cat- egories of academic achieve- ment, art merit and com- munity service to graduating high school seniors. Awards range from $1,000 to $3,500 and go toward alleviating tuition costs for recipients. AFSA also distributes financial aid scholarships to select students. This year the Scholarship Program awarded a record-breaking $352,000 in scholarships across both Merit and Finan- cial Aid programs. AFSA thanks the mem- bers of the AFSA Scholarship Committee and more than 30 other AFSAmembers who volunteered their time to