Ever since I was a child, I always felt overwhelmed by all the problems in the world. I always asked myself, "What can I do with my one life to make the most impact?" When I was in college, I got introduced to the idea of humane education, or education for social change, and I knew that would be my life's work. I knew that if I could empower and mobilize the next generation to be equipped to solve the problems of our time, I could multiply my impact.
At The Changemaker Project, we know that young people care about making the world a better place, but they don't always know where to begin. Through our program, we give youth a pathway to achieve meaningful change in their communities and globally. We provide tools, mentorship, and funding to help students go from idea to impact—and transform into confident leaders along the way.
We partner with schools and youth-serving organizations to reach middle and high school students. Our curriculum has three main components. First, students learn about the landscape of problems affecting people, animals, and the environment, exploring the root causes and intersectionality between issue areas. Next, students choose a problem they want to address and form a team of 2-5 likeminded changemakers. We then utilize Stanford's Design Thinking process to help students develop unique, high-impact solutions. Each team goes out into their communities and conducts empathy interviews with those affected by the problem. They gain insights, refine their ideas, and begin to eventually prototype a solution. It's an iterative process, where students are continuously testing their concept and refining it through conversations with their community partners and folks affected by the problem. Once they've formulated a solid project idea, they create a proposal which they submit to us for feedback, and make more revisions. Students then create a pitch video to present their idea at our annual Global Pitch event, and pitch their project for funding. Over the next 2-3 months, teams launch their projects alongside expert mentors in related fields. Throughout the process, students develop as confident leaders through our leadership development curriculum. The program culminates in our Changemaker Showcase, where teams present their finished projects and celebrate the impact they've made.
We utilize school email marketing, strategic partnerships with youth-serving NGOs and international school networks, advertisements on Google Adwords and social media, and organic word of mouth to advertise the program.
We iterate the program each year, making small (and sometimes large) adjustments to better serve our students. This year, for example, we piloted a one-semester (rather than whole school-year) model in order to accommodate schools utilizing a semester system.
We also recently created an adult program, for changemakers 18+, called the Visionaries Institute: https://www.thechangemakerproject.org/visionaries
We welcome all students (13-18), adult changemakers, teachers, youth-serving organizations, and school administrators to visit our website and get involved: https://www.thechangemakerproject.org/bethechange
You can also volunteer as a mentor to support our students (http://thechangemakerproject.org/mentors) or become a Global Ambassador to bring TCP to your region (https://www.thechangemakerproject.org/globalambassadors)
