Cassidy & Associates recently hosted Jose Herrero, U.S. Programs Director for Universidad Pontificia Comillas, and forty-five international students from Spain in conjunction with Georgetown University’s Center for Intercultural Educational and Development. Executive Vice President Gerry Warburg gave an insider’s account of how federal government relations strategies are increasingly important to organizations, both domestic and international. We are pleased to be partnering with Universidad Pontificia Comillas to host a program student this fall to promote an understanding of the intersection of American government and international entities.
“By encouraging such personal initiative, achievement, and service, the Congressional Award program promotes the well-being of our children and ensures the welfare of our country.” –President Ronald Reagan
When it comes to reaching out to the next generation to encourage civic engagement, bi-partisanship is alive and well in Washington. The Congressional Award Foundation was established by Congress in 1979 as a result of the efforts of Democrats and Republicans in both the United States Senate and House of Representatives. President Carter signed the legislation into law and subsequent Presidents have signed continuing legislation. The program is open to all 14 to 23 year-olds and advocates for public service and physical health and fitness for youth. This year’s 252 Gold Medal Award recipients were honored at a ceremony on Capitol Hill for their volunteer public service, personal development, physical fitness, and related activities. As part of the week long recognition program, the annual dinner of the Senate HELP committee honored Former Senate John Culver of Iowa for his support. As part of our continuing interest in encouraging America’s youth to become engaged in our government and in public service, Cassidy & Associates was pleased to serve as a corporate sponsor of this program. The Congressional Award is supported entirely by corporate and individual donations.
Earlier this year, legislation was introduced in the House that, as much as anything we’ve seen, strikes at the heart of some of the most challenging foreign policy, international affairs and security issues that the U.S. faces today. Nita Lowey’s “Education for All Act of 2010,” points out that almost half of the world’s 143 million primary and secondary school-aged children who do not attend school live in sub-Saharan Africa, and 40 million out-of-school children live in countries affected by conflict. The majority of out-of-school children are girls, with the highest proportion residing in the Arab states, Central Asia, South Asia and West Asia. The bill’s findings cite reports by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States and the Center for Strategic and International Studies that identify education as the best counterinsurgency tool available. The legislative sponsors state that:
“Basic education has been demonstrated to be fundamental to development. No country has reached sustained economic growth without achieving near universal primary education.”
The Education for All Act would ensure that the United States dedicates significant portions of its foreign assistance dollars to encouraging universal primary education for children. It would also commit the United States to playing a leadership role with bilateral and multilateral organizations to shepherd global resources for primary education. We have seen the benefits of a focus on education in emerging economies through our work with the One Laptop per Child Foundation, an international education non-profit which aims to bring opportunities for critical thinking and analysis to children in even the most remote and war-torn corners of the world.
To paraphrase a well-worn but timeless adage: “Give a child a fish and you’ve fed her for a day; teach a child to fish and you’ve fed her for a lifetime.” By teaching children, we not only enable them to feed themselves, but also to innovate, create, solve problems, and develop the tools necessary to resist recruitment by extremist ideologies that destroy nations and create global insecurity.
Cassidy & Associates is welcoming its new group of summer interns – eight students from seven colleges and universities. Typically, at the beginning of the summer, the large majority of our students interns express a lack of familiarity with how the federal government…or lobbying…really works and often admit to a healthy skepticism of “Washington insiders.” They have joined our program to gain a deeper knowledge of our country’s federal government system.
Cassidy interns spend the summer experiencing the workings of government relations. Some examples: attending congressional hearings; researching proposed agency regulations and analyzing the positive/negative implications for an industry; debating defense and national security issues; learning about marketing products and services to the federal government; delivering important documents to a foreign embassy; joining discussions at our internal weekly lecture series; and attending a course in Ethics 101.
Many students state they do not yet have a strong feeling of political party affiliation which makes for an interesting dilemma when we attend the Congressional Baseball Game with traditional seating of Republicans on the first base line (right) and Democrats along third base (left). All interns are assigned mentors and they quickly find that although we are a bi-partisan firm, there are passionate views of whether Republicans will (or will not) take over the House this fall, or which Senate candidate should prevail in one of a number of tightly contested races.
At the end of the summer, most students have a new perspective of “government” and “lobbying.” They have a healthy respect for the huge number of issues and pressures that face government officials and staff. They express a more realistic understanding of the role of a lobbyist as an advocate who helps present information regarding client issues. And there are always a few students who leave town inspired to become an active participants in shaping our country’s future through a career in public service.
The Cassidy & Associate Intern Program works with a number of institutions of higher education to provide substantive internship experiences for school credit. Contact John H. Smith, III, Human Resources Manager for more information.
City Year is a national organization that sponsors the collaborative efforts of young people aged 17 to 24 in a full year of service to partner with school systems and provide hands on educational support to children.
“At City Year’s locations across the United States and in South Africa, young people – called “corps members” – serve full time for 10 months. These young leaders put their idealism to work for children and communities through school-based service, youth leadership programs and community transformation…”
City Year is a good example of a successful program that is a collaborative effort between public school systems and private efforts comprising donations of time, talent, and funding from individuals, groups, and corporations. National Leadership Sponsors include blue chip corporations such as T-Mobile, Comcast, CSX, Pepsi, Aramark, Bank of America, Cisco Foundation, Deloitte, Walmart and Timberland.
US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is quoted on the City Year website as follows:
“You have to have folks with our students every single day, making a difference in their lives. That’s what City Year does, with its diversity, with its long term commitment, with its passionate young people. There’s no one else I know of in the country who is having that kind of impact.”
Last night the “Idealism in Action Gala” was held for the Washington DC chapter of City Year. It was an inspirational evening complete with City Year corps members who were present to mingle with attendees, sharing their stories of their year spent in D.C. Public Schools. Later, in an awards ceremony, City Year recognized a number of local individuals as “Idealists of the Year” for their contributions to the community. A “Lifetime of Idealism Award” was presented to TIME Managing Editor Richard Stengel. Cassidy & Associates was proud to be a Silver Sponsor of this event.
A new Brookings Institution study entitled “Invisible: 1.4 Percent Coverage for Education is Not Enough” by Darrell West, Russ Whitehurst, and E.J. Dionne finds that only 1.4 percent of national news coverage from television, newspapers, news Web sites, and radio dealt with education. This paucity of coverage is not unique to 2009. In 2008, only 0.7 percent of national news coverage involved education, while 1.0 percent did so in 2007. This makes it difficult for the public to follow the issues at stake in our education debates and to understand how to improve school performance.
