THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2023 41 the world. Modeled after the State Department, we have regions and issues organized by “desk”—e.g., the Europe desk or gender inequalities desk. This division makes the website more easily navigable and gives our analysts the opportunity to specialize, which we hope will make us more attractive to future employers. Volunteer analysts select their “desk” of choice and begin working with a team of other analysts interested in the same area. Despite the fact that we are located in different countries across the globe, desk analysts can easily bounce ideas off each other—reports are sometimes written conjointly, and everyone learns something from other volunteers! Each desk is led by a senior analyst and desk director—volunteers who have been with us from the earliest days of GorStra and have proven their leadership skills. What GorStra Does As a pro-bono human rights research group, we focus on human rights issues around the world. We offer both publicfocused and client-directed research. Our public side develops concise reports focusing on specific human rights issues of interest to our analysts. We analyze important, yet under-discussed issues using locally based sources, often in the language of the country on which we are reporting, along with open-source intelligence. We then publish these in-depth reports on our website and on social media. It is surprising how little information on global human rights makes it to the world stage and gains public attention—even the most experienced diplomats have gaps in knowledge, and we can help fill those gaps. Our main goal is to help push information forward, drawing public attention to critical human rights issues they might otherwise not know about. On our client side, we provide free research services to NGOs, charities, and other organizations in the field. Small charities, for example, often need to put all their resources into fundraising, which makes hiring a researcher prohibitively expensive. We help by providing free, bespoke, in-depth research reports on a human rights topic of importance to their organization. Students are the perfect researchers: We already have to do so much in-depth analysis for school, so why not turn our academic writing skills into professional ones? We have provided research assistance for organizations around the world, including Humanists U.K., the Global Peace Foundation, and Children of Heroes Ukraine. Different analysts work with each of these organizations, giving these students valuable experience in the professional sector as they prepare to enter the working world after school. Our volunteers can gain important, meaningful experience in just four to six hours a week. From the Field: Advice for College Students Foreign Service kids have grown up living around the world. But how do we decide what we want to do after we graduate? This is a challenge for FS kids and, in fact, for college students everywhere. And, once you decide what to do, how do you get your foot in the door? Our experience has taught us some lessons. Look Around. Take a look at the work already being done at your local level—in your city, at your university, or even internationally. You’ll find many people doing great things, and you might find someone who is doing exactly what you want to do. Ask to speak to them, just to learn more about what they do. They might have advice for how to jumpstart your career during university. If you don’t find anyone doing what you want to do, you can do it yourself! Just start on a smaller level, and grow it from there. From top left, by column: Samuel Jardine, James Sanchez, Alexis Cabello, Laraib Zehra, Kaitlyn Whitsitt, Leanne Curran, Aidan Gorman, Jennifer Young, Caleigh Plaatjes, Tamila Shvyryda, and Sukhpal Garcha. COURTESY OF AIDAN GORMAN
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