In his Thursday column, “Teach for the World,” Nick Kristof plugged Global Citizen Year as he stressed the need for Americans to embed in other cultures, noting that it would have a profound impact on everything from our foreign policy to our stance on the environment.  Here is an excerpt:

“Fewer than 30 percent of Americans have passports, and only one-quarter can converse in a second language. And the place to learn languages isn’t an American classroom but in the streets of Quito or Dakar or Cairo.

Here’s a one-word language test to measure whether someone really knows a foreign country and culture: What’s the word for doorknob? People who have studied a language in a classroom rarely know the answer. But those who have been embedded in a country know. America would be a wiser country if we had more people who knew how to translate “doorknob.” I would bet that those people who know how to say doorknob in Farsi almost invariably oppose a military strike on Iran.

(Just so you don’t drop my column to get a dictionary: pomo de la puerta in some forms of Spanish; poignée de porte in French; and dash gireh ye dar in Farsi.)

American universities are belatedly recognizing how provincial they are and are trying to get more students abroad. Goucher College in Baltimore requires foreign study, and Princeton University has begun a program to help incoming students go abroad for a gap year before college.

The impact of time in the developing world is evident in the work of Abigail Falik, who was transformed by a summer in a Nicaraguan village when she was 16. As a Harvard Business School student two years ago, she won first place in a competition for the best plan for a “social enterprise.” Now she is the chief executive of the resulting nonprofit, Global Citizen Year, which gives high school graduates a gap year working in a developing country.

Global Citizen Year’s first class is in the field now, in Guatemala and Senegal, teaching English, computers, yoga, drama and other subjects. Ms. Falik is now accepting applications for the second class, and in another decade she hopes to have 10,000 students enrolled annually in Global Citizen Year.”

The answer is most likely yes.

What is a bridge year?
A “bridge year,” sometimes referred to as a “gap year,” is a year between two phases of formal academic education, commonly the period between high school graduation and the beginning of college.  Global Citizen Year chooses to use the term “bridge year,” because we believe that a year of structured experiential learning will enable a student to more effectively bridge his or her high school and college experiences.

And, why?
Students who have taken a year “off”, enter college more mature, with new life experiences and perspectives that will make them better prepared to make the most of their college experience. At the same time, students are poised to contribute to their college community in new ways.  They enter school with renewed energy for academics and a clearer vision for how to focus during their time in college.

We’d recommend reading Gwyeth Smith’s article that ran recently in the Washington Post, in which he advocates for the majority of high school students to take a bridge year before college.  If you need more convincing, Harvard has recommended taking a bridge year to all of its students for the past 30 years.

Wondering if GCY might be a fit? Check out our selection criteria or meet some of our current Fellows.

How about the big concerns: safety and finances?  Take a look at our For Parents section, where we address these questions in detail.

Next Wednesday, Global Citizen Year will be hosting a live Q&A discussion for interested high school students and current applicants.  We will stream the conversation live from San Francisco on the blog using USTREAM.

Details:

• Time: Wednesday, March 10th @ 5:30pm (PST)/ 8:30pm (EST)
• Location: URL
• Who: GCY Staff and Current Fellow, Ian Zimmermann

Sign up below and stay tuned! Read more…

“Why getting Americans out of the country will help save the world” was written by David Kroodsma and cross-posted from The Huffington Post.

Tell high school seniors about Global Citizen Year.

Few Americans get to venture beyond our own borders. A pitiful 10 percent of Americans speak a second language and fewer than 30 percent hold passports. U.S. students have the lowest geography scores in the developed world. How can we expect our country to address global problems when so few of us have seen the globe?

I am lucky. I spent two years traveling, mostly by bicycle, first crossing Latin America and then the United States. As I traveled, I used my journey to raise awareness of global warming by giving talks at schools and going to the media. But when I talked to U.S. citizens about the plight of subsistence farmers in Honduras or coastal dwellers in Venezuela, I often received stares of confusion. I was more frequently asked, “Where is that?” than, “What can I do?”

Last week I shared lunch with Wil Keenan, an employee at Global Citizen Year. Each year, Global Citizen Year selects a Corps of high school seniors, and supports them through apprenticeships in Asia, Africa and Latin America during a “bridge year” before college. Students spend this year in a Peace Corps-like service project in a developing nation.

It’s a brilliant idea. Traveling and living in abroad is the best way to understand another culture, learn a new language, and grapple with the consequences of global poverty.

About a dozen students, or “Fellows,” are participating in Global Citizen Year’s first year. The organization hopes to expand next year to 50 students and then continue to grow. High school seniors can apply for 2010-2011 by March 15th. Read more…

Everyone expects American high school graduates to go directly to college. At the same time, they are also expected to know exactly what they want to study. It’s an unrealistic expectation – we live in a big world with lots of challenges and there are tons of possibilities. Global Citizen Year is an opportunity to break that mold and do something different – go into the world before college, use your skills to make a difference, and enter college with a stronger sense of yourself, meaningful real world experience, and a global perspective.

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