Raising Money,Changing the World. A Social Entrepreneur Builds a Movement and a Model at Global Citizen Year

Last week, when I pulled up in an old VW next to the walled compound where I was supposed to meet the young Americans preparing to work in the bush the power was out and the street was pitch black.  But no problem.  The hostess was prepared with candles and the meeting room and the lush topical garden flickered with dozens of tiny flames.  Women  in colorful robes and dresses and men in shiny suites milled noisily around an outdoor fire to keep warm as the hot day slid into a chilly night. Food was plentiful as the hostess had wisely ordered a kitchen truck with its own generator to serve native dishes.

The first night of Peace Corp volunteers in Africa or Asia?

No, it was a home in a suburb of  San Francisco and the event was the send off party for the first class of  the Global Citizen Year Fellows who were going Senegal and Guatemala a few days later to live with families in a rural communities.  They had recently completed 12 days of intensive training by youth development experts and social entrepreneurs on social innovation and sustainable development. Now they were ready to put it to work.  They were the inaugural class of Global Citizen Year and they were going to change the world. And they will.

The story of Global Citizen Year is the story of a remarkable social entrepreneur, Abigail  Falik, its founder, who spent the evening absolutely glowing with pride, even after the lights went back on and the candles were put away.

Abby, as she prefers to be called, is every inch a social innovator.  Her mission is to create opportunities for young Americans to learn about the world and social entrepreneurism. Her idea for Global Citizen Year grew during four years at NetAid where she launched a program for high school students to end global poverty – which became the flagship initiative of Mercy Corps.

And then she thought bigger –  a national movement that routinely offers young Americans the opportunity for a service year abroad in  the "gap year" between high school and college.  Abby redefined the "gap year" as a  "bridge year" between the US and the world and wants to make it an option in the education of every American high school student.  Her idea was to train and place young American high school graduates with families in rural communities around the world learning microfinance and appropriate technology by working on projects. At the end of the program they would return to their hometowns to share their experiences at local schools and through social media, and grow the program and the idea of a "bridge year" opportunity for every American.

To help launch Global Citizen Year, in 2009 Abby received the Draper Richard Fellowship to create significant social change and a Mind Trust Fellowship for education entrepreneurs.  And along the way she managed to earn a B.A. and M.Ed. from Stanford University, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and was named a Rainer Arnhold Fellow and a Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow. She left no stone unturned looking for money, using grants to enearth more grants and to recruit private donors.  At some point, I hope - and I think she does to - this will be part of the education of all Americans, an option they can choose, regardless of the financial ability, as part of public eduction.

Global Citizen Year has taken its first step into the world, buttressed by over a year of planning and fund raising.  The first step is the hardest for any social entrepreneur and the scariest.  It is not the end of the work, but the beginning.  It means ongoing  fund raising, managing, recruting and growing. Abby is ready for it.

If you have a dream and an idea, keep your eye on Abby and Global Citizen Year as a model for how to make it work.  And then make it work for you.