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Inspire Citizens

The Future of the World is in Our Schools and Classrooms

Inspire Citizens is an educational organization working with committed partners to reimagine education and schools through the lenses of compassion, understanding, action, and connection for transformative, engaged global citizenship. With educators and students we co-design inspiring learning experiences that work to shape a happier, healthier, more sustainable, and just future for all.

HundrED 2022
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Overview

HundrED has selected this innovation to

HundrED 2022

Web presence

2019

Established

200K

Children

21

Countries
Target group
All
Updated
April 2022
As educators, we have an urgent responsibility to be proactive in the way we design teaching and learning experiences. We must shape a better, healthier future with our students, and for us all.

About the innovation

Why did you create this innovation?

Inspire Citizens systemically enacts UN Sustainable Development Goal 4.7 by co-creating learning experiences with educators and students that shapes a better future. Transformative learning goals build towards action for: Harmony with Nature, Economic Viability and Circularity, Social Cohesion and Justice, Holistic Well-being, Humane Media and Technology, Futures Thinking, Wisdom and Compassion.

What does your innovation look like in practice?

As long-time international educators, we realized that although many schools have missions that are concerned with creating engaged global citizens, education for sustainability, and future-focused skills, rarely do these schools illuminate clear evidence of these ambitious and critical goals.

In discovering this need, we have leveraged our Global Impact Schools partnerships and our Empathy to Impact system to continuously evolve in school implementation programs personalized to the needs and context of each school -- helping co-design teaching and learning, programs, evidence collection and reflection for engaged global citizenship.

Currently, we have thousands of teachers and tens of thousands of students around the world who are involved in student-centered learning experiences designed in concert with our Empathy to Impact approach, Future Now Leadership Program and Futures Media channels -- all resulting in transformative learning and meaningful action in local communities.

How has it been spreading?

One of our major goals as an organization is to continuously provide proof-of-concept through the voices and stories of students and educators worldwide. Leveraging these stories and vignettes, along with the successes of our personalized partnerships, close relationships, and Master Educator Endorsement, has helped Inspire Citizens to become one of the most recognized providers and designers of critical and engaged global citizenship education.

You can learn more through our Empathy to Impact podcast, teaching and learning vignettes, and Futures Media publications found here:
inspirecitizens.org/empathy-to-impact-podcast
inspirecitizens.org/vignettes
inspirecitizens.org/futures-media

If I want to try it, what should I do?

Below you can see images and writing that shed light upon the range of work and services Inspire Citizens does with Global Impact School partners, Master Educators, Future Now Student Leaders, and Futures Media young journalists and producers.

You can also find other diverse information at www.inspirecitizens.org
Follow us on Twitter: @inspirecitizen1 // @inspirecitizen2

Impact & scalability

HundrED Academy Reviews
This seems to be applicable to any age group, content, curricular or extra-curricular program, and is simple and effective to integrate into curriculum.
It is so important to have discussions with our students that are going to make a difference and this program will help schools to create schoolwide programs around global and intercultural competence.
- Academy member
Academy review results
High Impact
Low Scalability
High Impact
High Scalability
Low Impact
Low Scalability
Low Impact
High Scalability
Read more about our selection process

Media

Inspire Citizens Unpacked: 2022-23
Check out this video link to learn more about the heart, head, hands, and HOW of teaching and learning for engaged global citizenship.
Future Now
With over 100 transferrable skills, tools, strategies, and futures thinking frameworks embedded in 25 active learning and leadership experiences, the Inspire Citizens Future Now toolkit and set of workshops provides students with opportunities for personal and community development in our complex and volatile world.Schools and partners such as Seoul Foreign School, Western Academy Beijing, Frankfurt International School, United Nations Association of St. Louis, and Xi'an Liangjiatan International School integrate Future Now into internal innovative programs that allow students to explore, engage, and become credentialed leaders as part of their on-campus learning experience. In many of these partnerships, students design contextualized learning profiles and host Future Now learning labs, whole-school strategic planning, or changemaker and leadership conferences.
Inspire Citizens Global Partners
We value all of our long-term partner schools, educators, organizations, and students as essential members of a global and transformative learning community and collaborative ecosystem that brings our Global Impact School model to life in diverse contexts.We are dedicated to deep learning guided by futures thinking, sustainable development, equity, and well-being while addressing the gap between good intentions and reality, between rhetoric and results in schools and organizations. We aim to continually reflect and evolve in order to meet the needs of our diverse partners and complex world.Meet our partners and inspirations here: https://inspirecitizens.org/icpartnersmentors
Futures Media — Inspire Citizens
With a growing bank of student publications, Futures Media provides an open space for students everywhere to explore and produce informed media for the critical and compassionate exchange of ideas. Through nearly twenty student-centered media channels, learners explore and engage with issues, ethics and diverse perspectives alongside humane storytelling, technology integration, journalism, civil discourse and information literacy.  In concert with partnering schools, classrooms, or student journalists, we aim to build student-led media labs grounded in the Empathy to Impact design system: Care, Aware, Able, Impact.ICFM learners, producers, and artists interpret global media while also working to publish credible information, capture underrepresented stories and voices, amplify imagination, and take systematic action for nature, sustainable development, well-being, and equity.Discover some of the student publications here: https://inspirecitizens.org/futures-media
Empathy to Impact RSS Feed
Host Scott Jamieson captures the voices and stories of students who own their learning and impact their communities. Bi-monthly global episodes are brought to you by Inspire Citizens.Subscribe here: https://feeds.transistor.fm/empathy-to-impact
Vignettes — Inspire Citizens
In Vignettes, we share our Inspire Citizen learning community’s evolution and demonstrations of transformative learning through written and visual snapshots. Our aim is to document diverse paths to the why, what, and how of student-centered, PreK-12 education for systems thinking, sustainable development, and greater equity. We also hope to highlight both challenges and successes, modeling a culture of excitement for personal and community development.Vignettes exists to capture stories of collaborative work with 2021-22 partners: schools, educators, students, organizations, and communities that make Empathy to Impact, @SDG2030, global citizenship, and informed action happen. Each of the vignettes helps to illuminate different cognitive skills and dispositions of our Inspire Citizens’ Impact Profile, but clearly can be applied to any personalized, 21st-century learner profile in diverse contexts. See our growing bank of vignettes here: https://inspirecitizens.org/vignettes
Master Educator Endorsement
Join in an interactive, flexible & powerful hybrid professional learning experience that explores thinking & resources for engaged global citizenship. We aim to spark the co-creation of teaching and learning that inspires and supports our students in shaping a more compassionate, sustainable & happy future.Learn more here: inspirecitizens.org/masters-endorsement-1
Global Impact School Partnerships
As international leaders in reimagining schools as community centers of sustainable development, equity, and wellbeing, we use Global Impact School partnerships, range of services, and transformative learning goals to guide and co-create future-focused, student-centered learning environments. Our mission? Enable educators and learners to work together to shape a more equitable and sustainable future. Center education on compassion and wisdom — empathetic understandings of oneself and the world through open-mindedness, deeper thinking, experience, and action.Continuously provide proof-of-concept through the voices and stories of students and educators worldwide.
Eco-Photography: Oneness with Nature
As we begin our eco-photography journey, it is important to remember that photography is a visual language that speaks to our emotions. It allows us, and others, to share important information, set moods, express creativity, tell stories, and show viewers the way that we see, interpret, and make sense of the world around us.While photography can be playful and simple, a deeper joy of photography can come from its powerful ability to connect our hearts and minds to nature, society, and ourselves in meaningful ways. A photograph can make you cry. It can give you goosebumps. Through photography, we all have the power to tell and frame stories from many diverse angles and perspectives. Photography can also be a powerful tool to raise awareness and advocate for change in the world.In these eco-photography courses, we will be opening our hearts, heads, and hands to reconnect with the Principles of Harmony in Nature.Through our eco-photography experiences we will aim to take photographs that spark change both inside and outside ourselves.We will learn skills and use photography to be curious, thoughtful, and inquisitive. Our photography will help us to develop gratitude and empathy by changing the way we see and feel on the inside about nature, others, and ourselves.Our eco-photography courses will also connect us to amazing professional mentors to help us to understand how to explore the world more deeply. We will call this, "Thinking like a photographer." In this way, we can learn from analyzing their work and from taking our own photographs to explore diverse perspectives, natural and human-made environments, and a variety of different cultures and communities.Finally, our photography will advocate for change, by creating and sharing visual messages and stories that ask viewers to think and act differently with regards to topics like nature conservation, celebrating diversity, and finding balance. At this endpoint, we will "be eco-photographers."

Implementation steps

Co-Creating with Inspire Citizens

Watch our 7-minute video to learn more about how to collaborate with Inspire Citizens.

Spread of the innovation

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