CARPE DIEM NEWS
Press Coverage
1. Tidewater News, November 7, 2008
Childlike Curiosity Still Drives Rabil
By Kathi Pines 2. The Press of New Zealand, November 5, 2008
Restoring Walls with Historic Past
By Shane Cowlishaw 3. Omaha World-Herald, October 16, 2008
High School, Gap Year, College; Taking a break between academic stints takes hold in U.S.
By Teresa Forbes 4. The Oregonian, Front Page, Monday, 28 July 2008
More Oregon Teens Take 'Gap Year' Before College
By Kimberly Melton 5. The Portland Tribune, July 23, 2008
Service programs help students fill ‘gap year’
Portland attracts Gen Y idealists who come here for ‘meaning-driven’ lives
By Jennifer Anderson 6. Baltimore Examiner, June 7, 2008
By Andrea Farnum
TIDEWATER NEWS, NOVEMBER 7, 2008
Childlike curiosity still drives RabilBy Kathi Pines Tidewater News
FRANKLIN—Growing up in Southampton County, Marshall Rabil often pondered what the world outside of Virginia was like.
“I always had a curiosity about how things were in other places. I wondered why I was born here and not in a small village in Africa,” said Rabil, the 27-year-old son of Franklin residents Frank and Lynne Rabil.
So, when Rabil later had the opportunity to travel to Japan for educational enrichment, that same curiosity pushed him to take the chance. Since going to Japan, Rabil has traveled extensively around the world learning new languages and different cultures.
In 2007, Rabil joined Carpe Diem International Education group, an international academic program that takes college-age students to faraway places like East Africa, Southeast Asia, Australia, the South Pacific, India and South America.
According to its Web site, the program’s goal is to push the comfort zones of students by immersing them in the cultures of the places they visit through volunteerism.
As a group leader, Rabil has been putting his travel history to good use by leading students in these excursions. Each trip has two mentors, one male and one female, who supervise and facilitate the students’ experiences.
So far, he has led a group to Central America and India. This spring he will take a group to East Africa.
Rabil enjoys watching as the students come into a greater understanding of what people all over the world are truly like. One of his fondest memories is a scavenger hunt in New Delhi, India.
“We challenged the students to use three forms of transportation, and one of them chose a rickshaw as one of his three — only he didn’t ride on the back; he asked the driver if he could switch places with him so that he (the student) could get a feel for what the driver must experience every day.”
Rabil’s boss and Carpe Diem founder Ethan Knight said in a telephone interview that Rabil’s relationship with the students is exactly why Knight is glad Rabil is on his team.
“Marshall has a rare quality that helps him get really in tune and in touch with our students. He can sense just when they need assistance but knows how to back off as well.”
Knight said Rabil also has been helpful in the development of new programs and marketing.
“He was instrumental in creating our newest program that will be sending students to Japan. He thinks way outside the box, so we usually use any idea he comes up with.”
Rabil thinks he eventually will settle back in his native Western Tidewater.
“I feel like right now I’m traveling and gathering knowledge and information that I can use in the future to really benefit Southampton.”
For now, Rabil plans to tour area high schools and speak to students about how they too can travel.
“I just want our kids to know that if anyone has the desire to travel outside the country, there are a number of ways they can do so. They shouldn’t let fear of the unknown hold them back. The world is wide open.”
For more information about Carpe Diem International, call 877-285-1808, e-mail info@carpediemeducation.org or visit www.carpediemeducation.org.
Tidweater News, November 7, 2008
THE PRESS OF NEW ZEALAND, NOVEMBER 5, 2008
Restoring Walls with Historic PastBy Shane Cowlishaw
In the hills above Lyttelton, ancient "dry-stone walls" built by Scottish stonemasons are receiving much needed attention from one of Canterbury's environment crusaders.
Lyttelton Environment Group spokesperson Alison Ross, who has been involved in several projects in the area over the years, has been organising groups of volunteers from overseas to clear vegetation from the historic structures.
Located on Department of Conservation land on Chalmers Farm, the walls date back to the 1880s and were built by Scottish immigrant Adam Chalmers and his wife.
Predominantly farmers, the couple also had a stonemason background, and constructed the walls to terrace what was to be one of the first dairy farms to supply the area.
Ross, who herself comes from a Scottish stonemason background, has organised groups of international environment volunteers, mostly from America, to come and work on various projects for the past six years.
The focus of the work on the walls, which stretch for around 100m, is to remove overgrown vegetation, particularly before tree roots begin to damage the structure.
Ross said there were no plans to repair or restore the actual walls despite their age.
"It's lasted a hundred years and as long as you're careful with some of these wildings ... it's a very well built wall, brilliantly built. To me it's like exposing Angkor Wat (a temple complex in Cambodia)."
Christchurch resident Bayden Norris, who lived on Chalmers Farm in the 1950s, said he was delighted at the restoration project.
"He (Alan Chalmers) took land up there that was pretty poor but over the years with his wife it's an old Scottish way of farming removed all the stones from the paddock and built a dry stone fence ... and in the process you have cleared your paddock of stones. Some of those stones are so big you just can't imagine two people doing it but I understand Mrs Chalmers was just as strong as Mr Chalmers."
After clearing the wall, the group plan to plant native plants and trees with the help of DOC and turn the area into a native reserve.
The Press of New Zealand, November 5, 2008
OMAHA WORLD-HERALD, OCTOBER 16, 2008
High School, Gap Year, College; Taking a break between academic stints takes hold in U.S.< br /> By Teresa Forbes
Instead, the May 2008 graduate of Roncalli Catholic High School is working to save money for college and taking time to figure out what he wants to study and do with his life.
"I've given it a lot of thought to what my future may hold, but I'm going to do it my way. I'm not going to do it by anybody else's so-called rules telling me when to do things. I am going to go to college when I'm ready," the 19-year-old Omahan said.
Break time
Like other young people who are either burned out from school or unsure of what they want to do with their lives, Sledge has opted to take a "gap year" from academics.
In some cases, a gap year involves enrolling in a structured program that offers an opportunity to travel and work abroad, doing community service jobs such as building houses or working in an orphanage in a developing country.
"We are seeing more students doing this. Not a huge number of students, but we see a couple in every class who actually have it all worked out and are doing something like that, a service-learning project," said Mary-Beth Muskin, director of guidance at Omaha South High School.
The gap year has been around for decades in Europe. One of the most notable gap-year participants is Britain's Prince William, who spent time working in Belize and Chile.
Coming to America
The gap year has since crossed the pond and is becoming more of an American thing to do.
Carpe Diem Education, a structured gap-year program based in Portland, Ore., has increased its programs by 30 percent in the last year to meet demand, said Ethan Knight, executive director.
Knight cites academic burnout among young people as a reason for the increase.
"They've done 18 years of living with a whole lot of school and really the last thing on their minds is college credit. You mention 'paper' and they run away and cower in the corner," Knight said.
With a structured program, many colleges are willing to defer enrollment for a year to allow students to work overseas.
"They feel it brings them a much better, well-rounded student," Muskin said. "If it's a service project, it's a terrifically eye-opening experience in terms of understanding life, people, privilege, rights and all those things that are wonderful life experiences that you would have a hard time experiencing any other way."
An extra year of college
Union College in Lincoln offers a gap-yearlike program to its students, which allows them to work overseas and receive college credit for it.
"We really call it an extra year of college because students gain more there than they do in college, for sure," said Chaplain Rich Carlson, vice president for spiritual life at the college, which is affliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
The program focuses on humanitarian, community service and mission work.
"It's a shrinking world. The kids get exposed to another culture and more than just in a visiting way. They have to embed themselves in the culture if they're there for a year," Carlson said.
The real deal
Kylie Schnell, an education major at Union College, taught school and did humanitarian work in Kenya last year between her freshman and sophomore year. Although she's a year behind her peers, Schnell, 20, said the experience of working overseas was priceless and reaffirmed her calling to be a teacher.
"I learned about the world and about myself and about how there is such a bigger picture to life than just what we know here," Schnell said. "I learned far more in that year than anything I could have learned in four typical years in college."
Schnell worked with children in the slums outside of Niarobi, Kenya's capital. She also did food outreach to thousands of families during the country's election crisis, an event that opened her eyes to how much Americans have and take for granted, such as government not based on corruption.
Like Schnell, Union student Becky Thompson also gained a stronger sense of self and broader perspective of the world after spending the 2007-2008 academic year in Nicaragua.
The 21-year-old international rescue relief and nursing major did medical work in Francia Sipri, an impoverished village along the Atlantic coast. Thompson did hands-on medical work like helping to deliver babies. She said the experience strengthened her self-confidence and taught her about conflict resolution.
"It's an amazing opportunity in that you learn about other people and see the world and get to know God better and yourself," Thompson said. "It definitely adds to your learning and does not take away from it, even though you may have to be in school longer."
The changed person
There's no doubt students return as changed people from their experience overseas, Carlson said.
"They're just different people. They have a worldview that's different. They have a maturity that's different. They have a responsibility that's different," he said.
While a structured gap year may be preferred, an unstructured year can serve a student well depending on the case, according to Muskin.
The pros: Students have a year to grow up and learn about life and people. The cons: They get out of the habit of studying and focusing. And if they're working, they may find it difficult to give up that paycheck.
"Those are the kids whom we worry a little more about if, in fact, they do go into something that requires the additional training and education," Muskin said.
Still searching
For Sledge, college is in his future — either next semester or next year. In the meantime, he's working as a site supervisor at Arts for All, a nonprofit program that provides affordable art classes to the public.
Sledge links his strong sense of independence to his father's death two years ago from cancer.
"I kind of decided then I'm not going to wait for someone to just hand things to me. I am going to go and get them," he said.
Omaha World-Herald, October 16, 2008
THE OREGONIAN, FRONT PAGE, MONDAY, 28 JULY 2008
More Oregon Teens Take 'Gap Year' Before College By Kimberly Melton
Jul. 26 - As high school graduation approached, Emily Flock of Portland didn't know how to explain to her parents that she was burned out, wrung out, tired of classroom walls and college-level coursework.
"I just knew I did not want to go to school right now," said Flock, 18. "I was tired of learning in a classroom. I want to immerse myself in the hands-on, real world."
Flock and a close friend will spend the next year building homes in Costa Rica, working on an organic farm in Ecuador and volunteering at a national park in Peru.
They're among more students taking a "gap year" between high school and college. The students often work, volunteer and travel abroad, sometimes by strapping on their backpacks and hitting the road on their own but often heading to another country through structured programs.
Groups catering to "gappers" are increasingly popping up on the Web. Companies that offer programs have seen a spike in interest and applications. Some gap year experiences can cost as much as $30,000 and come fully equipped with classes, outings and college credit. Others only require students work for their room and board.
Supporters say the slacker stigma attached to taking time off is fading as college counselors and academics recommend a break from school so students can clear their minds.
"They sit so much in high school and have people talk to them," said Ethan Knight, executive director of Portland-based Carpe Diem International, which offers three-month group semesters abroad to about 150 students a year. "I think part of our role is to take students out of park and put them into drive."
In a little more than a year, Carpe Diem has doubled its offerings, adding three programs that take students to East Africa, Southeast Asia and South America. In East Africa, for instance, students volunteer at an HIV/AIDS clinic in Uganda, cross the border to Tanzania, ferry across Lake Victoria, study Swahili, take a three-day trek with local tribes and volunteer with street kids who live near the base of Mount Kilimanjaro.
Carpe Diem charges $7,000 to $10,000 for each trip. And a budding partnership with Portland State University allows students to earn college credit.
Though the idea is catching on, it's hard to track overall numbers because many students still strike out on their own.
But Holly Bull, president of The Center for Interim Programs, based in Princeton, N.J., measures the increased interest in the number of gap year fairs she attends and is no longer having to explain the concept to people.
"I wouldn't call it mainstream yet, but I would say there's been a real tipping point in the past few years," she said.
Bull and her staff counsel students and parents through the gap year experience. For about $2,000, Bull will help students decide where to go, which programs are reputable and how to finance their yearlong adventure.
She bills her company as the "oldest gap year program in the nation" -- her father started it in 1980 -- and said she's worked with more than 5,000 people since then.
Flock and her friend, both Cleveland High School graduates, are working in Portland until December and hope to save $6,000 for their trip through Central and South America.
Heather Olson, 18, another Cleveland High School graduate, is also working until she and a friend leave for India in January to teach at a school serving disadvantaged youths.
Anne Kitzmiller, a Wilsonville High School graduate heading to a yearlong cultural and language program at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, wants to come back home with a greater sense of purpose and confidence.
"I'm not just going to college because everyone else is going," said Kitzmiller, 18. "I want to find something I want to dedicate myself to, something to fall in love with."
But her decision wasn't without some turmoil and skeptics.
"A lot of people at school questioned me about why I was taking a year to have fun," Kitzmiller said. "They were asking me why I was slacking off. I didn't want it to be seen like that."
Some students second-guess their decisions, and if they don't, parents and teachers do. Several students said teachers discouraged them from taking a year off, fearing they might never return to their education.
Parents question the safety of some of these far-off places. And students wonder, too, if the experience will put them a step forward or a step behind.
"Originally, I applied to colleges because I think I was scared to take a year off," said Olson, who is going to Rishikesh, India. "I was kind of afraid that when I went to college after a year I would have forgotten everything or be unmotivated."
Most students, Carpe Diem's Knight said, return to classes with greater passion and understanding of the world.
"It's one thing to talk about poverty and see it on TV," he said. "It's something completely different to be on the streets of Calcutta in the middle of it working at Mother Teresa's Center."
Students who have had these experiences are a growing commodity. Princeton announced plans this year to launch a program that encourages students to take a year off between high school and college to perform service work around the world.
Harvard University faculty and admissions staff recommend that students postpone their entrance to college for a year. About 50 to 70 incoming Harvard students do so annually.
Years ago, Lyn Wickman graduated from high school in Peru and took a year off to study in England before heading to college. So when her 17-year-old daughter, Lindsay, proposed spending a year abroad before college, Lyn said she was both excited and sad.
"I think it's hard going from having a daughter who's here all the time to someone who is more of an adult and is living in Switzerland," Lyn Wickman said. "I think it would be even more difficult if my husband and I weren't aware of it and hadn't done it ourselves."
After graduating from McMinnville High School, Lindsay decided she wanted to perfect her French. She's just completed her third week in Neuchatel, Switzerland, where she's an au pair, takes French classes and travels.
Back when she was in England, Lyn let her parents know what she was up to via postcards and the post office, but her daughter corresponds over e-mail multiple times a week and talks to her family with software that allows users to make telephone calls over the Internet.
Lindsay Wickman, like many gappers, also keeps a running blog of her adventures.
"I am happy and I am getting more and more comfortable with everything each day," she wrote recently. "I'm sure there are some lonely and difficult days ahead but I am excited for the year I have in front of me!"
For fellow McMinnville grad Sarah Cooley, being apart from her parents hasn't been as stressful as learning the cultural norms and customs in Germany, where she's doing a series of internships at the University of Bonn in the microbiology lab and working with animals in a biology museum.
"There is always difficulty of adapting to society's traditions and rules," she wrote in an e-mail about her trip so far. "Turning off the water in between every step in the shower, never leaving things plugged in, not using a dryer on clothes, walking EVERYWHERE."
Her education has already begun.
The Oregonian, Front Page, Monday, 28 July 2008
THE PORTLAND TRIBUNE, JULY 23, 2008
Service programs help students fill ‘gap year’Portland attracts Gen Y idealists who come here for ‘meaning-driven’ lives
By Jennifer Anderson
According to at least one economic study, several years ago Portland emerged as a haven for the Creative Class, the group of college-educated 25- to 34-year-olds who flocked here to immerse themselves in the alternative culture and jobs that abound.
Nowadays, Portland is becoming a hotspot for the younger, more idealistic set known as Generation Y.
Break Away, an Atlanta nonprofit that connects high school and college students to community service work, has brought 41 students from across the U.S. to its national conference in Portland this week, the theme of which is “environmental stewardship.”
In 15 years, it’s the group’s first conference in Portland, where the environment seemed like a natural focus, said Jill Piacitelli, executive director of the program.
So far, she said, “People are crazy about (Portland). It’s a town that people can be easily smitten with. They’re conscientious consumers of the places they want to live, do service in. They want to make sure everything fits into their meaning-driven lifestyle. Portland is a dreamland for that.”
Since July 19, the students have been attending lectures, workshops, panel discussions and other activities based from the Northwest Portland International Hostel and Guesthouse, 425 N.W. 18th Ave.
While they’re in town, they’re set to perform about 500 hours of volunteer work with community organizations including Friends of Trees, the Rebuilding Center, Zenger Farm and the Forest Park Conservatory.
Other Break Away groups that have come to Portland over the years have worked with Inside Out, the No Ivy League and other agencies that focus on hunger, homelessness, poverty, literacy, racism and the environment.
The idea of a “break away” is that students take an alternative approach to the typical spring, fall, summer or winter break that involves hitting the ski slopes or tropics.
When the six-day conference wraps up on Friday, July 25, they’ll return to their campuses and likely bring more groups to Portland for similar experiences before they head out to their next two destinations — Biloxi, Miss., for a training on voter registration and rebuilding homes, and Cincinnati for a lesson on urban renewal and poverty.
“The hope is to spend a lot of trips back from their respective schools,” Piacitelli said. “They’re hoping to do a good enough job so it’s not just a trend. That’s a fear of these college students, that it will come and go, but they do a strong education piece. So far that really is helping them to see they can be lifelong contributors to this work.”
Living and voting overseas
Another sign of the rising dominance of Gen-Yers in Portland is a small operation in Kenton called Carpe Diem International.
The organization, headquartered at the home of its executive director and founder, Ethan Knight, is based on the idea of providing a “gap year” experience to young, wide-eyed students.
The term refers to the growing trend of students taking a year off between high school and college, simply to recharge their batteries as well as pursue once-in-a-lifetime travel and community service opportunities.
“We’re trying to push them out of their comfort zone,” said Knight, a 2001 Willamette University graduate who, along with five staff members, leads semester-long trips to far-flung locales like Africa, Southeast Asia, South America and the South Pacific.
“We throw them into some really rich soil, where they’re curious about how things are different and how things are the same. It puts them into a totally different frame of mind for learning.”
For a fee of $7,900 to $9,900, the program includes language classes, food, lodging, group activities and travel while abroad; everything except international airfare.
Since launching in January 2007, Carpe Diem has sent groups of a dozen students on trips every spring and fall; this fall 80 will participate from across the U.S. as well as countries including Spain, Singapore, Brazil, Germany and Zimbabwe.
Because of the high interest in the U.S. presidential election in November, Carpe Diem is making special provisions to accommodate their participants, many of whom will be voting for the first time.
The possibility of not being able to vote while oversees was a worry for Amit Gordon, for instance, a Wilson High School graduate who’s headed to Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Honduras with Carpe Diem this fall.
“That was the biggest concern I had,” he said.
So Carpe Diem worked with the U.S. State Department to assist not only its own travelers, but the 150,000 students expected to participate in overseas programs this fall.
The state department subsequently launched a Web site, studentsabroad.state.gov, which offers guidance on topics such as health care, embassy locations, travel documentation and voting assistance. Students may register to vote from their home state, download absentee ballots and read up on the candidates via democratsabroad.org and republicansabroad.org.
The state department site gives great comfort to Gordon, who is looking forward to his trip despite his other nagging anxiety Carpe Diem can’t do much about.
“I’m really comfortable being away from home,” he said. “But my biggest fear is bugs — I hate big bugs.”
jenniferanderson@portlandtribune.com
The Portland Tribune, July 23, 2008
BALTIMORE EXAMINER, JUNE 7, 2008
By Andrea FarnumExaminer Correspondent
A growing number of high school and college students are emulating a long established British tradition of opting out of the rat race and taking a “gap year” to travel abroad and experience other cultures. The idea to delay the approach of school or work can be appealing to wanna-be travelers. “I knew if I didn’t do it I would regret if forever,” said Charlene Rossi, an account executive from Silver Spring. “The year after college that I spent in South America was the best learning experience I’ve ever had.”
For Brice and Naomi King of Towson, their gap year, which took them to more than 18 countries, came after their wedding when they decided to opt out of the work force, sell everything they own and travel the world for a year. “We used frequent flier miles for our air travel and asked wedding guests to help us fund our trip in lieu of gifts,” said Brice.
Some choose a more structured approach of a gap year by participating in formalized programs. “We cap our gap year groups at 12 students and two staff because traveling abroad can sometimes be intense,” said Ethan Knight, founder of Carpe Diem International. “We get a lot of students that are burned out from academia and that are looking for substance and meaning in their lives.”
With a fast globalizing world, seeing how others live can be eye opening for many gap year participants. “We take some our groups to remote parts of the world and let them interact with people who may not have electricity or a phone,” said Knight. “After a few days you can actually hear something click for participants who realize that people can be genuinely happy without MTV, Internet or cell phones.”
After a globetrotting year that started in Samoa and ended in Ecuador, King still finds it difficult to go to his nine-to-five job. “It was a life altering experience. We now hope to do it again but this time with kids.”
June 7, 2008 - Baltimore Examiner