The Office of Alumni Affairs would like to announce that early next year, Partners of the Americas will transition from implementing career development programs and grant opportunities for U.S. citizen exchange alumni and will pass on leadership to Global Ties U.S. These programs and opportunities build on the global skills of Americans who have participated in an exchange program, elevate the role of U.S. ExchangeAlumni as leaders in their communities, and advance U.S. foreign policy goals through citizen diplomacy. For more than 60 years, Global Ties U.S. and their network of international exchange professionals have elevated the role of citizen diplomacy in U.S. foreign policy, ensuring that U.S. citizens have an impact in strengthening our alliances abroad, while also building and enrichening their communities at home. The Global Ties Network is comprised of 84 Community-Based Members, in addition to more than 30 national organizations and international exchange alumni associations. As local hubs for global engagement, Global Ties Network members are the domestic infrastructure for U.S. public diplomacy efforts and will help us to identify and connect diverse and geographically dispersed exchange alumni. We look forward to working with them on the Career Connections and Citizen Diplomacy Action Fund programs through 2024. Exchange Alumni should expect to start hearing from Global Ties U.S. in January 2022.
We are extremely proud of the success these programs have enjoyed since their inception in 2019. For that, we'd like to thank our outgoing partners at Partners of the Americas. We couldn't have achieved these successes over the past few years without the hard work and dedication of Summar, Maia, and the rest of the Partners team. Together we've had four rounds of the Citizen Diplomacy Action Fund, providing opportunities for more than 130 teams of alumni to give back through community-based projects. We've also connected with over 1,000 alumni through Career Connections seminars, including five in-person seminars across the United States and more than 20 virtual sessions since summer 2020, including the inaugural Virtual Internship and Career Fair. Partners of the Americas will continue to support Career Connections events through the end of 2021 and monitor ongoing Citizen Diplomacy Action Fund projects through spring 2022.
To all our U.S. citizen ExchangeAlumni, we are excited to continue to engage with you in 2021, to share our new programming with you next year, and look forward to maintaining our momentum through this transition.