Community | December 14, 2009 | 2 comments

From the Blog: Global Citizen Year

source: http://blogs.current.com/news/2009/12/14/global-citizen-year/

afitzgerald
What did you do between high school and college? Work at the mall for the summer? Try to read all of your college books ahead of time? Play your videogames in the air conditioning? Or instead did you go to a developing country and lend your hands and your mind in an unparalleled experience in service and leadership? Yeah I didn’t do that either. But eleven Class of 2009 grads have, embarking on the pilot of Global Citizen Year.

Global Citizen Year is a fellowship program that invites high school seniors to take a “bridge year” before starting college and to serve overseas. From their site: “By providing intensive training and support, we ensure that our Fellows develop an ethic of service, the ability to communicate across languages and cultures, and a deep commitment to becoming agents for social change.” I think this is a really powerful idea. So few Americans travel, and even fewer ever develop a second language, and a program like this can provide a really incredible perspective.

Global Citizen Year (GCY) is just starting up this year and its first round of fellows have recently embarked for Guatemala and Senegal. I had the good fortune to speak with them before they left about documenting their experiences abroad. I invited them to share some of their experiences with us here to the Current News Blog and we’ve got some of their responses back already. I’ll be highlighting them this week: starting with Alec Yeh, Ian Zimmerman and Laura Keaton.

Laura Keaton / Guatemala:

My first impression of Guatemala was that the place I was living in was not “rural” as I had expected because everything in the little town in which I live is concrete and cinder block. There’s an internet café, and buses thundering past all the time. Also one thing that struck me the very first night was that they’re much more tolerant of noise here-- there was music blaring until at least 2 am that Saturday. But now I don’t even notice it, so I guess it’s just what they’re used to.

Alex Yeh / Senegal: Q: What are some of the local issues facing the community your in?

That's easy. Unemployment. Everybody here wants a job. Yet there are so many young, able bodied men here, that simply can't get a job. People just lounge here. They sit around and make tea and talk. And it's not their fault at all. They're so incredibly bored, and they yearn to do something.

Ian Zimmerman / Nebaj:

Guatemala Looking outside of Nebaj into the surrounding communities, one of the biggest problems is malnutrition. Beans, rice, and tortillas are great and all – but they frankly don’t make up a balanced diet. In an attempt to raise awareness to this issue, one of our projects is to begin a vegetable garden with kids at a community center called El Centro Explorativo in La Pista. We hope this project will lead families to start their own vegetable gardens as a means for which to improve the local diet.

NEWS BLOG: http://blogs.current.com/news/2009/12/14/global-citizen-year/

GLOBAL CITIZEN YEAR: http://globalcitizenyear.org
http://globalcitizenyear.org/blog/
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2 comments // From the Blog: Global Citizen Year // Video

  • Laura_Keaton
    • 0
      Laura_Keaton  

    • I think that if you take the time to read some of the blog posts from the past year's fellows, you'll see that this program is not about changing the "hopelessly backward, ignorant people of the third world", but more about American kids getting to see that the way we do things is not the only way, or necessarily the "right" way.

      There is certainly an ideal of ambassadorship; reaching out to connect with others on a very personal basis (part of the reason that the homestay families are such a key part of the program) but from conversations with all of the fellows I can say that our consensus was a realization of how little we can do to change any type of problem without a deep and well-rounded understanding of the history and complex interplay of cultures, organizations, governments, and people.

      If anything the experience I had simply let me grow as a person and come to the realization that the only place I can make real and effective change is, in fact, in my own backyard.

    • 1 year ago
  • Dagum
    • 0
      Dagum  

    • This article is absurd. It promotes the elitest myth that "America is a perfect, first-class utopia; and we need to send our children out to be good global citizens and enlighten the hopelessly backward, ignorant people, of the 3rd word."

      Unless you live under a one world government you shouldn’t give two shits about global citizenship or the "Global Citizen Year." If these schools want their students to bring about real change and help the homeless and hungry, they don’t need to send their children to Ethiopia, they only need to send them out into their own backyards.

    • 2 years ago
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