The Baltimore Council on Foreign Affairs is dedicated to citizen education in foreign affairs. It was founded in 1980 by broadly representative and distinguished community leaders. Lectures, seminars, discussions and studies are addressed to several audiences: established and developing leadership, international professionals, the attentive citizenry, youth and not-yet attentive public. The Council helps to develop effective citizenship, professional sophistication, and a more international milieu. The Council is particularly relevant to Baltimore, which, as a major port and multi-ethnic city, has special interests in international affairs in addition to those occasioned by national citizenship. Like its council counterparts in over seventy communities across the nation, the Baltimore Council on Foreign Affairs is purely a local organization in programming, governance and support. The Council is a private, not-for-profit, non-partisan, non-position-taking, open membership, public service association. Such councils are necessary to a community’s educational system, since the American system of federalism and limited government leaves certain essential educational responsibilities to private associations.