I didn’t visit many of the typical tourist sites but after almost 14 days of living the GCY experience, I feel that I’ve really been to Ecuador.  On arrival, I was greeted as a real celebrity; I was Abigail’s mom!  I experienced the sense of “family,” and the deep affection and loyalty that develops in GCY fellows, along with a feeling of solidarity and friendship that will last a lifetime. I also experienced, along with Abigail, the tremendous generosity and warmth of the Ecuadorian people, as we were welcomed into the homes of GCY fellows’ host families and the home…

**Below is a Parent Post from a recent visit to Ecuador, written by Lisa Freschi. 
College admission letters and offers of scholarship money filled our mailbox last spring.  Nic was happy, but not ecstatic.  When he received the call from Global Citizen Year informing him that he’d been accepted as a Fellow for the 2011-12 cohort, he lit up like a Christmas tree.  In that instant we all knew our lives would never be the same and we began to brace ourselves for the unknown.
We landed in Mariscal Sucre International Airport in Quito, Ecuador 11pm on February 18th, 2012.  We…

**The following is a post about our third Training Seminar in Brazil.
How would you get a group of young people excited about giving and receiving feedback?
Capoiera Angola. Yes, Capoiera Angola. That was how Wes got the Fellows excited about learning how to give and receive feedback.
Before providing a formal introduction to the “Giving and Receiving Feedback” module, Wes, the Program Director for Brazil, asked for a volunteer to join him in the center of our group’s circle to embody the module exercise without words, utilizing movements that they had learned during Orientation in September. Annie graciously and…

Our Fall 2011 Newsletter has just been released! Read an excerpt below, or click here… to see the full version with additional updates on our 2013 Application Launch and an Alumni Spotlight featuring 2010 Fellow Ananda Day and 2011 Fellows Peter Saudek and Clara Sekowski.

This August, we welcomed our 2012 Global Citizen Year cohort of 56 Fellows to Fall Training at Stanford University. During a world-class, two week training, our Fellows were introduced to global development, engaged leadership and effective communication by our inspiring faculty. Highlights included:

Intro to Global Development by David Abernethy (StanfordProfessor Emeritus)
Engaged Leadership Workshop

Global Citizen Year Founder and CEO Abby Falik gives an interview at this year’s Clinton Global Initiative meeting, highlighting progress in our partnership with the Nike Foundation’s Girl Effect and other opportunities for current and future Fellows.  To watch the full interview and hear more about Global Citizen Year’s growth since last year’s CGI, click here.  Thanks to Rainmakers TV… for a great interview!

As our Fellows wrap up their Summer Campaigns this week and prepare to shift gears for Fall Training, we want to congratulate them on their hard work and dedication over the last several months. Despite a bevy of technological challenges, they’ve found innumerable creative ways to mobilize support throughout their communities — from benefit concerts to garage sales to hand-written letters and cards — and impressed us with their resourcefulness every step of the way.
In the process, a few Fellows have even attracted the attention of local media outlets, earning feature spots everywhere from Ames, Iowa to Anacortes, Washington…

Our next post in the series offers insight from new 2011 alums in Boston and New York, reflecting on everything to the role of structure in their Global Citizen Years to what it really means to get your feet wet.
Peter Saudek
One of the most surprising things for me this year was that was able to take this whole experience into my own hands. I had worried that this wouldn’t be an option since I was part of a program. But it turned out that the level of structure Global Citizen Year provided was just right – not too…

For the third installment of Reflections on a Global Citizen Year, we hear from three alums of the founding class of Fellows who spent their Global Citizen Year in Senegal and have just completed their first year of college.
Gaya Morris
Every course I took this year at Princeton reflected my experience in Senegal in some way.
First, I took an international relations course trying to understand on a macro-level the big picture issues that affect the people I lived with in a small town in Africa.
I took a class on child psychology to help me explore my interest…

Continuing our series of reflections on a Global Citizen Year from around the country, we hear this time from two parents, one from Indianapolis, the other from Lexiginton, MA.  In the first excerpt, Doug Balchan speaks movingly about his daughter Madeleine’e experience in Senegal as she and two other Indianapolis-based Fellows listen on.   In the second, JJ Saudek discusses the transformative effect of a Global Citizen Year on her son Peter, a 2011 Fellow in Ecuador.
Doug Balchan
I’m sure you’ve all had the experience of something in your life – whether it’s a phone or a computer, or…

Since the class of 2011 Fellows returned from their country posts in May, they have been, by all accounts, overflowing – with stories and anecdotes, insights and observations, and – most of all – with excitement for all they’ve done, learned, and accomplished over the course of their Global Citizen Year.  After a week spent together at Re-Entry training here in northern California, they headed back to their hometowns to spend a final month working on capstone projects, communicating their experience back to a wider audience and inspiring others to get involved.  Most recently, our newest alums have joined the…

This reflection was written by Richard Miller, father of current Global Citizen Year Fellow Karyn Miller, after visiting his daughter in Brazil.
A long plane journey coupled with a ton of fresh memories is a good recipe for recording and sharing some thoughts from a visit to the settlement (or, in Portuguese, assentamento) that Karyn has been living in for these past five months in Nova Suica, Bahia, Brazil.  It was a quite remarkable experience, worthy of me dusting off my pencil (so to speak) and a strong candidate for a “top ten lifetime experiences” list.
The trip to Nova Suica served as the…