In 2017, as part of her participation in the youth leadership program Global Citizen Year, Dora—an 18-year-old from Huntington Beach, California—spent seven months in Thiadiaye, Senegal. One requirement of the program was the completion of a community project designed to address a local need. Based on conversations with local youth, Dora decided to create a guidebook for Senegalese high school and university students that provided details on scholarship opportunities.

Though she finished the project, completing a guidebook in both English and French, she was left with questions about how useful it would prove: Once she left, what would happen to it? Would her mentor or another community member print it out and distribute it? Would anyone update it or make it more accessible by translating it into the national language of Senegal, Wolof? Who or what would pay for any of this? If a student had questions about the guidebook, or applied for an opportunity and got accepted but faced obstacles in pursuing it, who would be there for them?

Individual projects like the one Dora completed have long been a central feature of leadership development programs. These projects—designed and implemented as part of the program experience for the purpose of applying learning—provide participants with learning opportunities based on adult learning and action learning principles, can yield tangible benefits for communities, and often foster collaboration. Yet they have significant shortcomings.

For more than a decade, Global Citizen Year has aimed to help young adults develop resilience, empathy, and agency, and become well-rounded citizens of the world. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the organization created a virtual-only program. Two years later, it decided to return to in-person immersion and, in keeping with its culture of learning and innovation, took the opportunity to step back and reassess its model. It began by assembling a global design team, then, using an online survey, asked young adults to share what they most needed in a leadership program. The global perspectives of both the design team and the 1,000 young adults surveyed led to a reexamination of longstanding program components and a shift in core design principles.

Read the full article about leadership development practices by Elikem Tomety Archer and Jessica Harrington at Stanford Social Innovation Review.