What makes the FAO Fellowship experience so distinct is the balance of direct service and strategic project work.

The direct service component of your Fellowship will give you hands-on experience delivering critically needed programs and services to the community. You’ll work to address inequalities that start early in life and your service will be an integral part of achieving your host organization’s mission.

You might provide homework help and afterschool programming to students, introduce a middle-schooler who has never been to a museum to an art collection that forever changes their life, or help an overwhelmed high school student navigate the world of financial aid and become the first in their family to attend college. 

Your interactions with the people you’re seeking to help will deepen your understanding of the effects of social inequality and give you the satisfaction of being part of the solution. The direct experience of positively affecting another person’s opportunities is critical to your growth as a future social impact leader because it allows you to understand the real day-to-day challenges within a community. When the student you have been advising receives a college scholarship, when you see a young person choose to vote in a local election, when a child reads to you instead of you reading to them, you’ll have an immediate sense of the value and impact of your work.

It is the kind of experience that will make you a more thoughtful and more effective leader.