Global Citizen Year equips young people to create meaningful impact on global issues.
Now accepting applications for Spring 2024 and Fall 2024!
THE FUTURE IS
UP TO YOU
Global Citizen Year selects talented, broadly diverse students, and equips them with empathy, agency and a global network of mentors and peers that will help them drive impact today, and throughout their lives.
TAKE ACTION LAB
Take Action Lab is an immersive learning program where students learn how to create a meaningful impact on human rights issues during a semester in South Africa. Students expand their global perspective and sense of purpose through a research-backed curriculum, cultural immersion experiences, and apprenticeships with organizations advancing human rights issues. They make friends and mentors for life and graduate into a community of changemakers from across the world. With Take Action Lab, students develop the skills, network, and insights they need to lead fulfilling lives that create positive change.
WHY GLOBAL
CITIZEN YEAR?
We need a new generation - representing society’s diversity and bringing curiosity, conviction and courage - to lead positive change and overcome our shared global challenges.
Global Citizen Year is the only program that recruits and selects the most promising future changemakers (independent of financial circumstances) and helps them to develop the insights, skills, and networks needed to drive social impact over the course of their lives.
Learn to make positive change
We can all make the world a better place. Focusing exclusively on the formative transition into adulthood, our experiences help young people identify their power, pursue their purpose and reach their fullest potential.
Personalized Mentorship
People become people through people. Our talented crew of educators and innovators walk the walk -- aligning our lives with our convictions, and inspiring our students to do the same. Additionally, with 100+ diverse mentors available for one-on-one support, students learn self-awareness, accountability and agency: the foundations for a reflective and purposeful life.
Unparalleled Global Network
Together, we go farther. With an alumni community of nearly 2000, the Global Citizen Year network is a lifelong source of inspiration, opportunity, and support. Our alumni are in colleges and careers in over 60 countries where they’re already having an outsized impact on society; and they’re just getting started!
Learning Beyond the Classroom
School shouldn't interfere with your education. Rather than limiting learning to the classroom, we take real-world experience and enrich it with a wrap-around of curriculum, coaching and a cohort. Our experiences are designed to build the true power skills of the 21st century, and our evidence shows we’re shaping values, perspectives and skills in ways classroom learning cannot.
Commitment to Equity & Inclusion
Talent is universal, but opportunity is not. We’re deliberately structured as a 501 (c ) 3 non-profit with social and racial justice - not profit - as our bottom line. We cast a wide net for talent and are proud to offer an admissions process that doesn’t rely on test scores, grades or a family’s financial circumstances. We give more financial aid than all other “gap year programs” combined (>$25 million since 2010) and 80% of students receive need-based financial aid to join us. By investing in promising young people who reflect our society’s diversity we’re changing the composition - and operating system - of the students who will shape our future.
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