Donate Today

Global Potential: Empowering Youth. Inspiring Change

Global Potential’s holistic model positively transforms the lives of urban youth. They shape the future and become leaders and entrepreneurs in business, community development, education and politics. Your gift supports youth and communities to empower each other through education, international service work, and cultural exchange. Your donation can give hundreds of youths the opportunity to transform communities while creating brighter futures for themselves.

Donate Today


Welcome To Global Potential

Global Potential (GP) trains 500 youth each year aged 15-23, who have high potential visions to become leaders, changemakers and social entrepreneurs in their urban and rural low-income communities around the world.

The majority of GP participants are first and second generation immigrant youth and have origins from hundreds of countries.

Global Potential provides youth and communities the leadership and entrepreneurial skills to create renewed life perspectives to affect positive change locally and globally.

Pour plus d’information sur Global Potential en français, veuillez cliquer sur le lien suivant: http://global-potential.org/gp-france/ ‎

About Our Organization

Our Mission
Global Potential’s mission is to empower youth and communities around the world to energize each other through education, international service learning, social entrepreneurship and cultural exchange.
Our Vision
Global Potential’s vision is of youth leading each other in a movement to take responsibility for the development of their own communities. These youth will partner across cultural and national backgrounds, and with existing organizations and governments, to create diverse, healthy, safe, peaceful, and collaborative places to live. These youth, with increased access to opportunities, information, resources, and mentoring, will become changemakers and social entrepreneurs. Our vision is to create and grow innovative community-led solutions to complex social issues.
Our Accomplishment
  • We have served 1,985 youth, all from minority backgrounds and low-income communities.
  • 287 of these youth have had life-changing experiences traveling internationally.
  • Each year, we directly serve 500 youth, including 40 new competitively-selected Fellows.
  • Through the work that our youth do internationally (building classrooms, sidewalks, community gardens, and running health and literacy workshops, and children’s daycamps), we have served over 16,769 people directly and an additional 13,500 indirectly, for a total of 23,493 people impacted.
  • GP youth have created 15 independent Social Enterprise Ventures funded at $1000 each, 15 documentary films (3 award-winning), and done dozens of internships, and activism and service projects.
  • GP youth do an average of 781 service hours during their 1.5 years, benefitting 219 people each.
  • We have held 10 incredible youth leadership conferences in 3 countries, with more than 1000 youth participants, from over 80 different inner-city and rural village communities.
  • GP youth demonstrate and report increased leadership, self-esteem, responsibility, and commitment to their educations. GP alumni, compared to their peers, have significantly higher rates of high school graduation, college enrollment, scholarship awards, and college retention.
  • GP youth discover the power they have within themselves to become vehicles for change in their own communities, and blossom into activists, leaders, artists, community organizers, filmmakers, mentors and social entrepreneurs. Gaining experience outside of their communities allows youth to build the confidence and skills to deal with their own problems, to gain a global perspective, and to become competitive for getting into the colleges and careers they want.
  • We engage youth in GIVING rather than RECEIVING help, breaking the cycle of poverty.
  • We are pioneers in the policy arena, promoting the inclusion of populations traditionally marginalized from international service learning and cultural exchange education.

The three phases of Global Potential

The first six months consist of weekly two-hour after-school training workshops on a wide range of critical social issues, including human rights; national and global issues of race, religion, gender, culture, and poverty; social entrepreneurship; team building; effective communication; confict resolution; sustainable change making; The workshops are guided by volunteers with diverse backgrounds and expertise. GP youth are encouraged to think deeply about the issues being presented. Small-group discussions and team building activities cement their knowledge and forge bonds. In its five years of operation, GP has refined its winning methodology. The eighteen-month program is divided into three dynamic phases: preparation and mentoring for six months; cultural immersion in a rural village for 6.5 weeks; and integration and mentoring to fully absorb what was learned.
GP participants experience 1.5 months of immersion in a rural village in a developing country. Often this is the youth’s first international travel experience Having built increasingly closerelations with our international villages since 2008, GP has focused this cultural exchange on villages in the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Nicaragua. This profound experience in shared living is fully immersive – our youth are there, with their host families, 24/7, sharing work, meals, laughter and ideas. GP youth fill their days carrying out internships, community development and media projects, and educational workshops. They organize youth-led conferences to dialogue and inspire. GP youth who cannot travel to the village participate in local activities such as college visits, local exchanges between NY and Boston and media advocacy projects
10.5 months of individualized and group support and coaching based on the passions and abilities of each youth. GP youth carry out their projects in their high schools and surrounding community. Each participant selects a Major and a Minor on which to focus her or his energy. The youth select a Major and a Minor on which to focus her or his energy. The six Major and Minor tracks are:

1. Social Entrepreneurship (social business ventures)
2. Media Advocacy (photography, mural-painting, theatre, documentary)
3. Community Service & Activism (service-learning, social justice campaigns)
4. School Leadership (school clubs, GP recruitment)
5. Internship (in GP partner sites, or directly with GP for professional development)
6. Health and Fitness (sports for healthier living)

How We Work: Winning Methodology

Global Potential provides youth and communities the leadership and entrepreneurial skills to create renewed life perspectives to affect positive change locally and globally. GP employs an holistic year and a half methodology that trains youth to become leaders through media advocacy, social entrepreneurship, global awareness, community development and service-learning. GP empowers hundreds of passionate and dedicated volunteers to impart the GP programs.More Info

Where: Global North

Global Potential operates out of 16 high schools and GED programs in the US and France. GP’s headquarters are located New York City, with considerable work carried out in Brooklyn, Bronx, Harlem, Queens and Washington Heights. GP Boston supports students living in Roxbury, Fenway, Dorchester and East Boston. GP France is located in Paris, and works with youth from La Courneuve and Le Blanc Mesnil. The weekly workshops occur in partner schools and GP offices. More Info

Where: Global South

Global Potential partners with 10 different villages in the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Nicaragua. All rural villages are carefully selected to welcome GP youth for 45 days of international cultural exchange and community projects during the months of July and August. GP actively works in marginalized rural villages in the southwest Dominican Republic (Batey 1, Batey 7, Batey 8, Batey 9, Batey Cuchilla and Los Blocks de Mena); in Haiti (Cité Soleil, Terre Froide and Bas Gormand); and Nicaragua (El Hatillo and Las Minas, in the department of Matagalpa).More Info

Impact: Leaders of Tomorrow

Each year, Global Potential trains 500 youth aged between 15 to 23. These youth have high potential and self-vision to become leaders, changemakers and social entrepreneurs in their urban and rural low-income communities around the world. Most GP participants are first generation immigrant youth and originate from dozens of countries. Global Potential’s holistic model positively transforms the lives of urban youth. They shape the future and become leaders and entrepreneurs in business, community development, education and politics.More Info

Latest News and Events

What Participants Say

I really enjoyed GlobalPotential because it stood out as an organization that really made a difference — but for once it wasn’t the adults making the difference — it was us, the youth. In the Dominican Republic, I learned how not to procrastinate. I learned that people were dependable. Unlike what I thought before, the community didn’t come “on and off” when it wanted to. The electricity was not dependable. . . . I didn’t have the choice to put important tasks off. . . .I learned about the world, how different yet similar we are. When I returned home, I co-founded a social venture called Les Manos United, to bring awareness and take action about racial discrimination, and learn about social issues affecting us.”
Christelle Abraham, GP Youth Fellow graduate, 2010-2011, Graduate of John O’Bryant High School, Sophomore at St. John’s University, NewYork, GP Program Manager, New York (GP Boston graduate, 2009-2010
 “Thank you GP for all those great moments and all the amazing people I have encountered. I always knew that I was destined to be a part of it. GP is the best organization that fits my interests in the world. Through GP, I have learned how to be a better leader, improve my humanity and be useful to society. GP became a place of family and comfort for me. I will always remember that time when we went to El Hatillo community in Nicaragua, and the people received us with such love and hospitality, as if we were all a part of their families.
Daniel Martinez, 18 years old, originally from Colombia, graduating Senior in high school at John D O’Bryant, upcoming freshman at Harvard College, Gates Millenium Scholar, accepted to summer program atMIT in 2012, two-time winner of Ashoka’s social venture award with GP, return youth intern with GP, documentary-maker

Our Partners and Supporters