Global Citizen Adventure Corps

Global Citizen Adventure Corps (GCAC) provides college credit and scholarships for service-learning and travel opportunities to high school and university students in rural communities, bringing their voices and personal experiences to global issues. GCAC participants become leaders, who also bring a global perspective back to their home communities, resulting in exponential change for all people, places, and planet. 

Everyone has a role to play in creating a better world; GCAC programs are open to all students and community members worldwide. However, we primarily serve rural students from economically challenged communities in the Mid-South and Ohio Valley regions.  

In recent decades, as the “nightly news” became a 24-hour stream and social media allowed for unedited and, unfortunately, often uninformed voices to shout loudly, divisions of thought and practice have become more evident across the U.S. GCAC founders and board members easily recognized the impact on the rural South. Systemic issues such as poverty, addiction, and racism continue to grow, and traditional responses to counteract the negativity do not appear to be working.

Rural youth collectively comprise twenty percent of public school students in the United States. Many are enrolled in Title I high schools and if they attend college, are often the first generation to do so. Rural school districts are small with constrained resources often based on population, and, therefore, underserved as compared to their urban counterparts. Furthermore, in recent decades, urban and suburban communities have experienced an increase in ethnically diverse populations which is not true in rural settings further limiting exposure to significant cultural influences.

These complex challenges beg the question: how might a young person develop cultural competency without access to do so? Global Citizen Adventure Corps strives to fill that void.

According to the SYTA Student Travel Digest, 74% of school teachers surveyed believe travel has a very positive impact on a student’s personal development and positively impacts students’ performance at school. Additionally, educators and career/technical school administrators underscore students are completing degrees still lacking critical soft skills like problem-solving and communicating effectively. 

By offering college credit and scholarships, GCAC builds pathways between rural high schools, universities and our robust network of global nonprofit partners, in order to provide global service-learning  and citizenship travel opportunities to underserved students. 

Our ultimate goal is to build a more equitable playing field for rural students. By providing access to international education, we provide the next generation of compassionate leaders and innovators the tools to solve the world’s most pressing challenges, at home and abroad.