The Global Citizen Year core program model is a ten-month, intensive leadership training and full immersion in developing and emerging countries across the world. It begins with a one-month orientation in the United States with a curriculum revolving around three key themes: personal growth and leadership, social impact, and global competence . The initial month is followed by an eight-month apprenticeship during which the student lives with a family in a local community. Clusters of 10 Fellows are grouped regionally under the guidance of a “team leader.” Throughout the ten months, Global Citizen Year Team Leaders visits all students once a week to serve as a mentor, coach and support system.
In the countries where Global Citizen Year operates, Team Leaders are locally based year-round and form lasting relationships with host communities, assuring that apprenticeships are mutually beneficial. These important liaisons are usually from the local country but have extensive experience with the American higher education system, as to understand the needs and mindsets of both stakeholders. Over 90 percent of families and communities opt to repeat the hosting experience. Given that apprenticeship sites receive no reimbursement for hosting Fellows, and that host families’ reimbursement is carefully constructed to cover only costs (and not extra income), the high rate of return shows that local hosts find value in their shared experience with Global Citizen Year Fellows.
The diversity and preparedness of the participant cohort has always been a key program design element. Abby intends for each cohort to reflect the diversity of the United States, with representation from various ethnic groups, income levels, and regions of the country. Participants are selected with attention to their passion and leadership potential, as well as their grit and capacity for self-reflection and self-directed learning. Abby pursues a broad recruiting strategy, including social media, referrals from high school counselors and promotion through strategic partners. In 2014, Global Citizen Year Fellows represented 34 states, with 51 percent of Fellows belonging to a minority ethnicity. The organization’s work with parents is crucial: Through a tailored parent orientation, Global Citizen Year is helping to redefine the parent’s role as one who helps her child grow through “stretch” experiences, outside of his/her comfort zone.
Global Citizen Year is working hard to dismantle the myth that a bridge year is accessible to just a privileged few: 80% of students have received some form of financial aid, with 20% receiving fully funded fellowships. In the future, Abby aims to work with government agencies to allot federal resources to bridge year programs. Currently, Global Citizen Year is spending roughly $25,000 per participant. Comparatively, Peace Corps spends about $50,000 per year, and Teach for America raises $25,000 per teacher in addition to salaries provided by the host school. Global Citizen Year’s goal is for earned income to cover 100% of direct Fellowship costs (currently, it covers 65%) within the next five years. Philanthropic money will only be earmarked for growth capital (ie. expansion to new countries and organizational capacity building) and movement-building activities.
The most important impact on cost, however, is Global Citizen Year’s recent progress in embedding the program directly in universities. The organization is partnering with both Tufts University and The New School to pilot two distinct models of the bridge year’s formal incorporation into the American education system. In both instances, admitted students receive funding to complete a bridge year. Tufts University is granting financial aid to accepted students who choose to participate in a “1+4 year” program – completing a Global Citizen Year’s Fellowship, with the premise that students who have explored the realities of the world and have defined their goals for college, will perform better once they matriculate. Perhaps more radical in it’s promise to disrupt our higher education system is The New School’s “1+3 year”model: Global Citizen Year Fellows’ year abroad, accompanied by an online writing and reflection course developed by The New School faculty, fully counts as a complete first-year curriculum. Consequently, students and colleges receive the benefits of the bridge year without the addition of time and cost. The New School has cited the new program as a healthy challenge to the culturally ingrained idea that college translates to a 4-year, campus-bound birthright.
Ultimately, Global Citizen Year aims to help universities change the expectation of how young people transition from high school to college - making the bridge year the norm, not the exception. With two distinct prototypes for partnership, GCY is focusing on cultivating a pipeline of university partners that endorse and incentivize the bridge year. Campus partners can engage on several levels, including actively encouraging or requiring a bridge year, offering a formal deferral to bridge year-goers, giving admission preference to applicants who have performed a bridge year, subsidizing a bridge year, and/or awarding academic credit for Global Citizen Year Fellows. Other plans include integrating bridge years into the common application, and creating a joint application process to both Global Citizen Year and the institutions themselves.
Another key piece in Abby’s mission to change the American talent pipeline is the support from Global Citizen Year’s growing corps of alumni. Not unlike Teach for America, Abby aims to foster the leadership efforts of alumni and, in turn, nurture cohorts of ambassadors who will commit time, talent, and resources to the bridge year movement. As part of growing this core strategy, Global Citizen Year has recently created a director-level position devoted solely to alumni engagement and support. Having experienced a 10x growth over its first five years, Global Citizen Year has accrued almost 300 alumni with nearly 100 in the field today.
As the field grows, Abby is aiming for a measurable language change from “gap year” to “bridge year,” positioning this new transition not as an elite extravagance, but rather a rite of passage young people should take before committing to binding decisions like choosing a major and investigating future career paths. She has begun to change the national conversation through outlets like the New York Times, Newsweek, Forbes, and Fast Company, while also working to encourage peer organizations’ adoption of the term “bridge year” and other language signifying a new pathway to higher education.
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