GAP Years for Girls: A New Wave of Good

There seems to be a universal shift, an awareness of sorts, taking place across the globe. Baby boomers as well as their offspring seem to be searching for more in their lives and what they can do better.

The quest for purpose and fulfillment seems to be universal, and thankfully seems to be apparent in the younger generation of women these days. High school students are more involved in causes than ever before.

What Is a GAP Year

A GAP year is often referred to as a time in a young girl’s life when she takes a hiatus from traditional learning and explores things outside her academic world. In search of purpose and fulfillment, a young girl sets out in search of herself.

Helping others, traveling, and community service are just a few examples of how a young girl can participate in a GAP year.

Typically, young girls after graduating high school will take some time off to explore and investigate their lives above and beyond the standard walls of a university. Traveling abroad is popular.

One of the basic premises of a GAP year is to encourage young women to find out about themselves while exploring new ways to address the world as a whole. All the world’s problems cannot be solved through traditional educational systems. By exploring through travel and hands-on experiences, young women get potential insight into the future of the world and how they wish to be a part of that.

A GAP year is beneficial in many ways.

Discovery

A young girl gets the opportunity to discover who she is by traveling and providing community service in much-needed areas of other countries. By participating in programs that help others, a young girl gains insight as to what she may want to do with the rest of her life and how that will impact the lives of thousands of others.

Explore

A GAP year provides a young girl with the opportunity to explore and expand beyond what she knows as her own smallcommunity. She gets to see first-hand how some other children may be living and how she can help when she creates her future.

Taking time off to explore, travel, and reach out gives a young girl the opportunity to settle into what she may see for herself for the rest of her life.

Growth

And, of course, with discovery and exploration comes the natural process of growth. Spirituality, altruism, and philanthropy are not traditional subjects in traditional classrooms.

Growing is part of the process when a young girl reaches out to embrace a GAP year. And, in her growth, comes the growth of the world.