Personal Contribution: Community Outreach Network

During my second week at the Virginia Beach Office of Senator Tim Kaine I completed my first project.  I was assigned to call all of the school districts in the Eastern Region and obtain the contact information for their public relations point of contact.  We were collecting this information to prepare our community outreach capabilities to assist in workforce development and education for the Department of the Navy’s 335-ship goal.  Essentially, the Senator wants to partner with local school districts to ensure that the Norfolk area is capable of meeting the labor demands associated with shipbuilding/repair. Norfolk’s port is the Navy’s largest shipbuilding/supporting port on the East Coast and the local area is reliant on the Navy’s interests for economic success.  It’s interesting to consider how my work to establish a solid foundation for community outreach capabilities may impact the careers of many students still in high school and middle school. The goal is to inform the public relations point of contact of educational opportunities and workforce development programs that their students might be interested in to construct a STEM educational pipeline to meet the labor demands of the Navy for the next 20 years.  I handed in my work to the Eastern Regional director and had assumed that the information was for her to use but I was surprised to find out that it had actually been assigned by the DC office. I hadn’t realized how the DC office uses the regional offices to delegate geographically-oriented tasks but it makes sense why they’d do so. The first piece of information that this community outreach network will be used to disseminate will be information regarding our event on June 8th where the Senator will holding a forum to discuss the Navy’s new goals and the positive implications they’ll produce in the region.