Take Your Child To Work Day

This year in my job as CLO I was able to put together a program for kids of embassy employees for Take Your Child To Work Day.  We had the front office swear in our kids as "officers for the day", and then they were off to many of the different sections of the embassy to learn a bit about the work that their parents are a part of.  The political and economic section presented a brief introduction to one of the issues they deal with and talked about how they demarche foreign governments on issues that are important to Washington.  They then set up a mock demarche with the prime minister of St. Lucia (played by one of my favourite officers at the embassy and our friend Kurt Van Der Walde) so the kids could try their hands at being foreign service officers.  I should say that the girl Greg picked to deliver the demarche probably doesn't have a future in diplomacy as her arguments as to why the St. Lucian government should follow our advice is that we are much more powerful than them and "if we went to war we would sink your island like a brick falling to the bottom of the ocean."  Note to Greg: don't pick the security officer's child to play the role of a diplomat next time!

Next up was a visit to the security office where the kids got to play with some of the toys that the marines and the security officers use such as night vision goggles and a shooting simulation. They also got to see the more procedural side of security with a demonstration of how they take fingerprints.  I wasn't able to take pictures of the security part of the day, but they did, so if they share the pictures I will post them later.

After the security office we visited the Public Diplomacy office where the kids learned a little bit about public diplomacy and how our PD office interacts with the local press.  They then got to put their new knowledge to work at a mock press conference that the Deputy Chief of Mission was kind enough to attend.

The kids got to see inside the consular section and learned a bit about how our fraud detection unit identifies fake documents, and then they visited our military liaison office where they learned a bit about the different branches of the military that are represented at post.  It was a busy day, but the kids really seemed to enjoy it, and it was great to get so many departments to participate.

11 kids assembled in the front office meeting room waiting to be sworn in.

There is only one future diplomat in this picture!

Conor with Charge Chris Sandrolini

Greg briefing the kids on how to present a demarche

The fateful meeting.

Learning a bit about our military presence at post.

Each child had a question to ask at this mock press conference.

Conor's friend Ben trying on a flight helmet.

Future pilot?  He did think that this was fun!