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ChangEducate is a Discover Worlds program that will change the way high school students view poverty and how they can make a difference in it. We have designed a curriculum conforming with the national guidelines for social studies, and we are creating a DVD to explain both domestic and international poverty, motivate students, and show them projects they can get involved with. The DVD will be produced within the year and piloted in North Carolina. Initially, the material will be distributed to social studies teachers throughout the United States.

A joint project of Discover Worlds and the professors and directors in Duke University’s Education Department, ChangEducate is the first of its kind. There is currently no such DVD, and the project has garnered growing interest among teachers. Students are not just the future: they can be great leaders now, contributing their intelligence and effort to innovative projects that make a difference in the community. This project will capitalize on our most under-utilized resource: the passions and talents of youth.

The DVD

The DVD will tell inspirational stories of students who have created social entrepreneur projects. The students have already been selected through a nation-wide contest, and the projects we will highlight include

• Starting a women’s boarding school in Kenya
• Creating a vocational school in rural Rwanda
• Starting foundations and non-profits
• A newly developed hospital volunteer system for students

The Curriculum

The ChangEducate curriculum consists of five separate lesson plans taught in either one or five course periods, depending on teacher preferences.

• The single-session plan begins by challenging students to think critically about poverty within their own communities through a set of carefully chosen questions aimed at gauging their existing knowledge of poverty. The plan then provides a short but detailed introduction to global poverty in its current state, exploring the scale of poverty both domestically and internationally. Finally, the lesson shows students what they could do to combat poverty.
• The five-session alternative takes place over an entire week and features five distinct topics each day of the week. The first lesson introduces students to the topic of poverty by challenging them to associate a set of images with their individual conceptions of poverty. The second lesson explores the underlying causes of poverty ranging from historical factors such as colonialism to current factors such as trading inequalities and geography. The third lesson focuses on the sheer scale of poverty in the world. Finally, the fourth and fifth lessons show the students how they could make a difference.

Our Goal

The overarching goal of the ChangEducate program is two-fold: to raise awareness of poverty and to empower students to make a difference. The curriculum accomplishes this goal by providing substantive material on poverty to which students can relate as well as showing them an example of how someone in their position could truly make a difference. This would be a revolutionary way to show students how much of a difference they can make!

We currently seek partnership with a publisher to develop an educational tool that exceeds any interactive classroom curriculum on the market. We hope to use the expertise and resources of a publisher to create a product that can easily be integrated into existing curricula. The DVD will be produced and directed by students, but any ideas or advice from the publisher would be more than welcome. After the product is complete, we hope that the publisher would publish the DVD.

Discover Worlds is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization with a mission to enable students to become social entrepreneurs and create high impact projects against global poverty.

If you would like more information about ChangEducate, please do not hesitate to call or write us. We are best contacted by email. Information is also available on the ChangEducate blog.

Discover Worlds
P.O. Box 97774
Durham, NC 27708

Phone: 1-973-271-4756
Email: <contact@discoverworlds>

Participating

One of the core characteristics of ChangEducate is inspiration. We’re looking for the success stories of student social entrepreneurs to broadcast to students around the world, showing them that they can make a difference. If you think your story might fit this description please fill out this application and get it to us as soon as you can. We’ve recently extended the deadline but can accept no more applications after October 15th, so get them in soon!

To stay up to date on the progress of this venture please visit the ChangEducate Blog.