As a student, faculty, staff, or administrator you have the opportunity to transform your campus into a microcosm of a world where changemakers can thrive. This can be done on a small scale in your classroom or co-curricular program, or on a large scale across your institution and beyond.

Colleges and universities also have significant assets that when aligned for social impact can play a critical role in sparking changemaking in their community, and creating enabling conditions for changemakers around the world.

Your commitment can focus on changing your campus culture, campus operations, or educational offerings so that they encourage, support, and reward changemaking on your campus.  Learn more about what this looks in Changemaker Institutions.

At its core, changemaker education sparks a sense of agency in students.  It gives students real-life opportunities to understand problems and practice creating positive social and environmental change.

Looking a little deeper, changemaker education develops the mindsets, skills, and knowledge students need to:

• understand themselves, and social and environmental problems
• creatively identify solutions
• and collaboratively facilitate thoughtful and effective change for the good of all.

While changemaker education can be a module of a single course, it is most powerful when delivered as part of an integrated learning pathway.  This pathway ideally has multiple touch points (both curricular and co-curricular) across a student’s academic experience.  It is also best supported by an institutional culture and institutional operations that model changemaking.

Learn more about changemaker learning outcomes.

Changemaking is a broad and inclusive term used to describe a wide range of approaches. Approaches nested within changemaker education include social innovation and social entrepreneurship. Depending on institutional and disciplinary contexts these terms may be used in a variety of ways. Complementary educational approaches like civic engagement, community engagement, and service learning can all be essential components of changemaker education but are not representative on their own.

The focus changemaker education has on taking collaborative action, thinking in systems, developing creative solutions, and sparking a deep sense of agency in students is what sets it apart. 

A common misconception of changemaker education is that the focus is solely on equipping students to start new ventures.  While starting a venture can be one solution a student might choose to engage in, it is just one of many tools a changemaker might draw upon to address a social or environmental problem.  Other tools might include advocacy, philanthropy, design thinking, bridge-building, and culture change to name a few. 

To learn more, read our Primer on Responsible Changemaker Education, learn about Ashoka’s four levels of impact, and our views on the evolution of the terms social entrepreneurship, social innovation, and changemaking.