This year’s Gap Year Scholarship winner is Amanda Brinegar of El Paso, Texas. She will be participating in a gap year program through Global Citizen Year where she will travel to Senegal, Africa. Amanda was chosen as our winner over all of the other applicants because her essay most strongly demonstrated her drive and determination to use her gap year to “test drive” a few possible ways that she might be able to contribute to the world in her own unique way. You can follow Amanda on her blog at: http://amandabrinegar.wordpress.com/.

Here’s what Amanda says about her hopes for her gap year:

“I want to work directly with the indigenous people. I want to be a part of a new generation of Americans to provide leadership that will address the global challenges of the 21st century. I have compassion and an ethic of service, but I need to develop the ability to communicate across languages and cultures and better understand the world and my place in it. I truly believe that my life is closely connected to others across our global community; I want to discover those connections.”

Global Citizen Year is a non-profit organization that partners with high schools and colleges in the US and NGOs around the world to create opportunities for emerging leaders to work as apprentices in Asia, Africa and Latin America.  For more information about their program you can visit: http://globalcitizenyear.org

This will be our last scholarship given under the Where’s the Map? name, as the scholarship will now be associated with Test Drive Your Future. We feel the new book and the new name truly embody what we are trying to accomplish with this scholarship program —helping young people take the time to figure out what they really want to do with their lives by doing what we call an “Extreme Test Drive” in the form of a gap year. To learn more about our Gap Year Scholarship, click here.

Runners-Up

We would also like to recognize the following runners-up to the Gap Year Scholarship who will be awarded a copy of Test Drive Your Future. We were impressed by so many of our applicants and wish we could have offered everyone a scholarship.

• Lauren Honican and Esther Khachatryan who will study conservation in Ecuador, public education in China, sustainable agriculture in India, and public health in South Africa through a gap year organization called Thinking Beyond Borders.

• Alysa Vanderheym, Diana Chung, and Lacey Shaw who will be participating in LEAPNOW’s LeapYear to India for three months, followed by a three month internship.

• Kaia Waller who will volunteer at a Haitian summer camp, participate in a 3-month Patagonia NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) course, and volunteer through the WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) program.

• Yeosol Chung who designed an independent gap year diving into her passion for history lessons by conducting research in local museums.

We wish Amanda and all of our scholarship applicants a fantastic journey!