The Foreign Service Journal, December 2022

42 DECEMBER 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Avis Bohlen Award for a Foreign Service Family Member Virginia Carlson Creating Social and Educational Opportunities for Youth V irginia Carlson, a Foreign Service family member, is being recognized for her hard work and creative initia- tive as she led myriad activities at post to enrich the experiences of youth in the U.S. embassy community and the host country. Shortly after Ms. Carlson’s arrival in Kingston, Jamaica, in 2019, she realized that activities for teenagers were extremely limited. With three high school–aged children of her own at home, Ms. Carlson took it upon herself to organize community- wide events and programming designed for teens and their families. She even personally hosted socially distanced events, with the help of the embassy’s community liaison office coordinator (CLO), when families returned from authorized departure. “It was just so lovely to give kids a place to go and to see them interacting again after so much isolation during COVID,” she recounts. To help newly arrived fami- lies integrate into the expatriate community in Kingston, she put together regular social events— from walking groups and lun- cheons to poolside barbecues. The capstone event demon- strating Ms. Carlson’s commit- ment to the local community took place in 2022, when she seized on an opportunity to give back to Jamaicans. While completing an internship at the American International School for her master’s degree in education, Ms. Carlson noticed a disparity in the educational and recreational resources available across the island. In the spirit of Jamaica’s national motto, “Out of Many, One People,” and the country’s popular saying, “One Love,” she decided to organize a book drive dubbed “Share the Love.” An avid reader who toted a large collection of books from post to post during her family’s many moves, Ms. Carlson grew up relishing the offerings at her local library. Deploying her strong planning skills yet again, she set out to collect books for every age and on every topic for distribution to schools and libraries. “I did not want to limit the pool of donors to just the small diplomatic community,” she tells the Journal , “so I asked my Jamaican neighbors to spread the word. As a result, several older Jamaican ladies delivered their treasured book collec- tions to my house, delighted to be able to pass on items that their own families no longer needed.” Ms. Carlson estimates that the drive generated donations of hundreds of magazines and DVDs, and about 3,000 books, all of which had to be sorted and organized for distribution. She designated 500 children’s books to go to the most remote and poorly resourced schools on the island, in partner- ship with the Peace Corps. Others went to the Jamaican Library Services, a high school, and a community in the mountains where the CLO and a locally employed staff member among the embassy guards had established a rapport. Books that did not meet school or library requirements were earmarked for an embassy book fair and other local causes. Virginia Carlson. – EXEMPLARY PERFORMANCE – Virginia Carlson delivers boxes of books to Jamaican Library Services headquarters in March 2022.