For the 11 American high school graduates living and working in Senegal and Guatemala right now, college can wait. The teens comprise the first class of a new program called Global Citizen Year, in which pre-college students are sent abroad for seven months to work on sustainable projects for needy communities.
Book ended by a month of training in the Bay Area and a month spent presenting their capstone projects, the students are launching what founder Abby Falik hopes will be a trend. “Our vision is huge,” she said. ”We’d like to see this just be a standard part of education in America.” I spoke with Falik last week.
How did you develop the idea for Global Citizen Year and when was it launched?
When I finished high school, I called the Peace Corps and said, “Can I join you now?” They said, “We’ll see you in four years.” The frustration of that really stayed with me. I’ve carried this idea and this question of, “How do we make access to meaningful international experiences available to many, many more young Americans from more diverse backgrounds at a younger age.” I spent a few years at Harvard Business School incubating the concept for Global Citizen Year. The launch was January of 2009.
What is a “global citizen year” and why is it so important?
There are a number of needs that we’re addressing with this concept. This country is being called upon to play a leadership and collaborative role in solving global challenges, but we’re not really preparing global leaders. At the same time, we have all sorts of data on the struggles young people are facing when they get to college without a clear sense of who they are or what they want to study. So the need we’re addressing is really to provide a bridging experience that prepares young Americans to understand themselves in the world, to learn a new language, to have firsthand work experience in the developing world. [This develops] a key skill set that allows them to then arrive as college freshmen with their head on straight, an idea of what it means to be a leader, how to use their education very intentionally and then how to move through college toward a career in social impact.
Many students take gap years on their own. Why do they need Global Citizen Year?
The tradition of a gap year that’s been so well-established in other parts of the world, it’s really been very slow in gaining traction in the U.S. The ironic bit about this is that we have college admissions officers who wish that kids took time off. Yet kids and parents are still a little bit anxious about the process. So, what we’re doing is developing an opportunity that’s accessible to kids from all backgrounds and an intensive training and support that is very academic-oriented, but also experiential. Young people are moving through a nine-month, very structured curriculum with us. So rather than just putting on your backpack and seeing what happens, we’re connecting young people to professors from leading universities, mentors, a cohort of their like-minded peers. The international experience is sort of the heart of what we provide. It’s an apprenticeship. Our fellows are placed with a variety of organizations that are addressing a challenge from an NGO perspective or a government perspective and even a private enterprise perspective.
Talk about some of the projects that the students work on abroad.
Alec Yeh is the son of Taiwanese immigrants and [will be] the first in his family to go to college. He wanted the experience of doing some work in the world. He knows he wants to be a doctor. He has spent this year living and working with us in a rural community in Senegal. He’s learning about medicinal healing and local, traditional approaches to health. A few days a week he spends in a public clinic, so he’s assisting doctors in procedures, watching babies being born and learning how to get a hand in this work. We’ve got young people who are teaching English to groups of women. In Guatemala, there’s a peanut butter cooperative that’s generating income. In Senegal, a young woman has revitalized a local library and has set up a computer station. It’s about finding a way to put our students’ skills to use in support of local projects.
How much does the program cost and what financial aid is available?
The cost is $25,000. That’s the cost to us to run the program. But from our founding class of 11 students, every one of them is receiving some level of financial aid. We determine financial aid along a sliding scale, the same way a college would. Parents pay what they can. Students are all required to fundraise $2,000 toward the cost.
What’s next for the organization?
The next step really is to figure out, “How can we create a real movement?” The vision here is much bigger than 11 kids. It’s actually, ”How do we plant the seed in American culture, so that it’s just something that young people look forward to doing?” We’re looking to add a country in Asia to the mix for next year. We’re looking to partner broadly with larger international organizations, so we can really expand our field presence, and partner with institutions in the U.S., whether it’s networks of high schools or colleges and universities that could help direct kids our way. Imagine if college admissions offices sent out a certain number of letters every year that said, “Congrats! We’ll see you in a year. Take a global citizen year. We’ll see you on the other side.”
Photo: Courtesy of Abby Falik
