1. In the summer of 2004, Congressman Bill Lipinski and Congressman Jack Quinn, Co-chairs of the Congressional Caucus on Central and Eastern Europe received in their Capitol Hill offices for six-week internship appointments the first congressional interns from Poland. The internship hosts have enthusiastically endorsed the US-Poland Parliamentary Internship Program, calling it "an excellent transatlantic civic education initiative..., which we would highly recommend to our fellow Members of Congress...". The influential voice and the insightful guidance of the Honorable Senator Bob Dole and Distinguished Professor Lee Edwards of the Heritage Foundation, long-time friends of Poland, have contributed to the success of the internship program .
2. The program's overall mission is to offer academic enhancing and career building opportunities for outstanding young scholars, who are eager to acquire first-hand public service experience while interning at the office of a US lawmaker. The underlying premise is to create an institutional mechanism for support and selection of the next generation of promising American and Polish business and government leaders, who will likely assume leadership positions in their home countries and will conceivably play a significant role in strengthening the fundamentals of the transatlantic relationship.
1. The internship syllabus, designed in conjunction with the staff of the hosting lawmakers' offices, will enable Polish interns to attend public hearings of policy-specific congressional committees and/or subcommittees, to conduct legislative research to assist the hosting lawmaker and the staff on most pressing floor issues, to draft correspondence to constituents, and to facilitate wide variety of communication functions. The elite inside-the-beltway institutions, within the framework of briefings/workshop/speaking engagement events, organize for Polish interns unmatched "out-of-office" activities that explore, inter alia, political leadership, foreign policy and economic and trade issues.
2. In the case of US interns, the internship syllabus will center around two components:
i) The inner workings of a legislative office: will allow US interns to travel to the constituent field office (i.e., Cracow, Gdansk, Katowice, Opole or Wroclaw) to participate in policy debates and witness the decision-making process at a local party chapter level.
ii) The conference/seminar module: the biweekly two-hour sessions will feature prominent Polish scholars and dynamic speakers to explore -under the Q&A format - policymaking issues as they pertain to national security, changing technology and the economy. The agenda will also highlight representatives from the US Embassy in Warsaw who will hold two special-focus briefing sessions for the US interns.
2. Every qualified Polish applicant for the Capitol Hill summer internship in Washington, DC, will be required to complete a "Summer Congressional Internship Application Form", and - upon acceptance into the program - pay a one-time processing fee (program administration fee), which will help offset the costs of the project, including the testing of each applicant's competency to communicate in a legislative environment, the designing of an internship syllabus with the participation of the hosting lawmaker's office staff, assisting in the identification and securing of appropriate accommodation for the term of his/her internship, and assorted logistical and administrative costs associated with the program. Upon receipt of the application, a letter of invitation signed by the hosting lawmaker and including the internship schedule and curriculum will be sent to the nominated candidates.