Fast Company Features Global Citizen Year

When Global Citizen Year founder Abby Falik was 18, she wanted to enroll in the Peace Corps instead of going straight to college. “I was a good student, but ready to do something real in the world before continuing on to more school, and the Peace Corps says, ‘See you in four years, go to college first,’” she remembers. “So I’ve been sort of fixated since then on the irony that when you’re 18 in this country, you can join the military, you can join some sort of religious mission and go abroad, but there’s no way to do global service in a civilian capacity.”