Community Connections Comes to Johnston Community College

April 4, 2002

Community Connections has once again come to Johnston Community College.

Ten participants representing various segments of industry will arrive in Johnston County in June to participate in the program, which offers home stay-based, three-to-five week practical training opportunities in the U.S. for entrepreneurs, local government officials, legal professionals and non-governmental organization leaders from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Kazakhstan, and Armenia.

Community Connections is administered this year by Barbara Smith and Kristy Darden, who joined the JCC staff March 25. The program provides participants internships with local companies based on interest and experience. Participating companies provide opportunities for hands-on experience as well as exposure to how businesses operate in our economic system.

The goals of the Community Connections program are to provide professional training and exposure to day-to-day functioning of a free market system; encourage public private partnerships in the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union (NIS) by including private sector and government participants; and create grassroots linkages between U.S. and NIS regions and communities.

Smith and Darden are currently recruiting host families and business to participate in the 2002 program. Community Connections offers the opportunity to engage in a unique cultural exchange. In exchange for providing the interns with an up-close and personal look at American family life and culture, host families receive exposure to a people and a culture that few Americans know about.

The program will run from June 5 through July 2. Community Connections is a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State and administered by the Office of Citizen Exchanges.