Step away from your everyday life, discover what’s important to you, and develop the skills and confidence you need to succeed in college and beyond.
Apply nowYou’ll begin by setting out to one of our international locations to volunteer and immerse yourself in a new culture. Once you return from abroad, you’ll head to San Francisco where you’ll explore your interests, work with coaches, and build a portfolio of work. Finally, you’ll put your skills to the test—set out into the real world to pursue your passion with a team of coaches and peers supporting you every step of the way.
Step outside your comfort zone, break your preconceived notions of self, community and the world, and gain a deeper sense of empathy and cultural sensitivity.
Mérida is the starting point for a series of journeys into Yucatán and its archaeological treasures. It’s also a thriving town with plenty of good eats, bustling markets, music, dance, peaceful streets, and parks. Mérida offers a small, safe community setting with a wide range of service learning projects available. This location is great if you already know some Spanish and are looking to improve your language ability.
Perched in the misty highlands beneath the Himalayas, Dharamsala is a market town, lush farmland, and spiritual retreat all in one. The area is influenced by Tibetan Buddhism; the Dalai Lama resides in the next town over. In contrast to the bustle and crowds of most Indian cities, Dharamsala serves as a serene retreat where you can meditate, practice yoga, and make a difference in the community while exploring northern India.
Bali is a tropical island paradise with white sand beaches, rice paddies, coral reefs, lush jungle, and volcanic mountains. You’ll stay in a small remote fishing village where you’ll interact with the local community and culture daily through your volunteer activities. In your free time, you can make the most of the warm weather, friendly locals, and laid-back lifestyle by exploring ancient temples, taking a yoga class, or hiking waterfalls.
Huanchaco is a quaint and relaxed beach town on the coast of northern Peru with a history dating back to the original Peruvian civilizations. Once the home to indigenous fishermen, it is now a World Surfing Reserve known for its traditional reed fishing boats, long calm waves for surfing, and ceviche. The surrounding area is still in need of much development and you can assist in a variety of volunteer projects.
Sitting in the shadow of Africa's tallest mountain, Mount Kilimanjaro, Moshi is a small, clean, and vibrant market town. Tanzania's natural beauty is easily accessible from Moshi; you can go on safaris, visit nearby national parks, go mountain climbing, or check out the local hot springs and waterfalls. The city itself is low-key and provides a safe environment to volunteer with locals from the Maasai and Chagga tribes.
Wake Up
Breakfast
Service
Learning Project*
Lunch
Service
Learning Project*
Coaching Call
Dinner
Free Time
*Depending on your service learning project, you may volunteer in the mornings only, afternoon only, or a combination of both. Most fellows volunteer for 20-25 hours per week. When you’re not volunteering, you’ll spend time on program reflections, blog posts, and challenges intended to push you outside of your comfort zone and make the most of your time abroad. Weekends are left open to reflect and explore.
Have the freedom to direct your own life and learning.
Be a part of and engage with a new community.
Increase awareness and respect for people different from yourself.
Learn to thrive in a new environment.
Observe and reflect on your experiences
Work alongside other volunteers to help make a positive change in the world.
Have the freedom to direct your own life and learning.
Be a part of and engage with a new community.
Increase awareness and respect for people different from yourself.
Learn to thrive in a new environment.
Observe and reflect on your experiences
Work alongside other volunteers to help make a positive change in the world.
Head to San Francisco and meet the rest of your cohort. Spend the next 10 weeks focused on what you want to learn. Grow. Stretch. Fail. Learn how to learn. Build on your strengths, identify your weaknesses, and create your own definition of success.
During your stay in San Francisco, you’ll live with other Year On fellows, forming a fun, powerful learning community. You’ll live in our Year On dorm and work every day at our co-working space in SoMa, the heart of San Francisco’s startup world.
Your Coach will be there for you throughout the program. Coaches help set long-term goals and break them into actionable chunks. Your coach focuses on you as a person—because we understand that your ability to be successful doesn’t just depend on the content you learn, but also on your work habits, mindset and physical and mental well-being.
While you’re here, you’ll spend lots of time focused on what’s next. We’ll bring in speakers from all different career paths, host networking events and help you explore your interests so you can discover where you want to go—and how to get there.
We focus on projects so you can apply your learning in a real world context, learn how to bring something through the creation process (from imagination to completion), and have the space you need to make something amazing. Your project will serve as the beginning of a portfolio of work that you can take with you into college.
Work Sprints provide an opportunity to work together to bring something to life in 48 hours. You’ll discover what you can create when the pressure’s on, and learn to stop worrying about perfection. You’ll cut corners, execute on your work, stay up late, and, at the end of the sprint, present what you’ve created to the others.
Year On has a network of professionals who are excited to help you grow and pursue your interests. Advisors are industry experts who can help you explore your professional field of interest—what skills it takes to succeed, what types of jobs exist, and the best way to pursue your interests.
Head to San Francisco and meet the rest of your cohort. Spend the next 10 weeks focused on what you want to learn. Grow. Stretch. Fail. Learn how to learn. Build on your strengths, identify your weaknesses, and create your own definition of success.
During your stay in San Francisco, you’ll live with other Year On fellows, forming a fun, powerful learning community. You’ll live in our Year On dorm and work every day at our co-working space in SoMa, the heart of San Francisco’s startup world.
Your Coach will be there for you throughout the program. Coaches help set long-term goals and break them into actionable chunks. Your coach focuses on you as a person—because we understand that your ability to be successful doesn’t just depend on the content you learn, but also on your work habits, mindset and physical and mental well-being.
While you’re here, you’ll spend lots of time focused on what’s next. We’ll bring in speakers from all different career paths, host networking events and help you explore your interests so you can discover where you want to go—and how to get there.
We focus on projects so you can apply your learning in a real world context, learn how to bring something through the creation process (from imagination to completion), and have the space you need to make something amazing. Your project will serve as the beginning of a portfolio of work that you can take with you into college.
Work Sprints provide an opportunity to work together to bring something to life in 48 hours. You’ll discover what you can create when the pressure’s on, and learn to stop worrying about perfection. You’ll cut corners, execute on your work, stay up late, and, at the end of the sprint, present what you’ve created to the others.
Year On has a network of professionals who are excited to help you grow and pursue your interests. Advisors are industry experts who can help you explore your professional field of interest—what skills it takes to succeed, what types of jobs exist, and the best way to pursue your interests.
Each week of the Focus phase is broken out into a topic area. We combine individual project work, group accountability check-ins, life skills workshops, and a Friday Review that brings the community together to tie up a busy week.
Self-directed Learning
Goal Setting
Self-evaluation + Reflection
Introduction to Financial Habits
Weekly Community Meeting + Lunch
Fellow Lunch
Fellow Lunch
Fellow Lunch
Fellow Lunch
Coaching & Individual Project Work
Individual & Group Activity: Goal Setting
Individual Project Work
Individual + Group Activity: Budget Development
Individual Project Work & End of Week Review
Team Stand-up
Team Stand-up
Adulting 101:
How to cook a meal
Team Stand-up
Community Dinner
*Note: the weekly schedule and workshops are subject to change and vary from cohort to cohort.
Now it’s time to take the next step. Pursue your passion in whatever form works for you—take a class, volunteer, land an internship. No matter what you do, your Coaches and peers will be your support system, every step of the way.
During the Launch phase, you will apply everything you learned during the Explore and Focus phases to the real world, with your Coach and community of Fellows there to have your back. You can work on a project, complete an internship, take a class, or go to bootcamp.
At Fjord, my initial job description was, “Interaction and Service design Associate”. However, my in-house name transitioned to the Fjord Artist in Residence. I’ve had the opportunity to work with big clients — they’re impressive — and for the past three months I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by different designers, all of them great at what they do. I sit in on meetings with clients and I am starting to have a firmer understanding of design thinking— literally, the way designers think. Most importantly, I’ve been able to try different design roles within Fjord to see which one I really take a liking to.
During my time in Launch, I spent my time working on logos and packaging design while learning more about the startup and tech scene. For my internship, I needed some experience and something to focus on, instead of the broad spectrum of graphic design. So I found a bootcamp in Toronto called Brainstation. Brainstation’s full-time UX program is a 10 week immersive course in which students learn everything from the strategy and planning behind designing an app or website to the UI. We learned mainly by doing instead of listening to lectures. By the end of the program, we all presented our own app concept that we had created as our final project.