For institutions
Certified Changemaker Hub
A certified path for schools, universities and youth organisations that decide to trust their young people, and want the evidence to show for it.
Most institutions ask young people to prove themselves first and trust them later. Students are taught, tested and credentialed, and only then, maybe, allowed to act. The result is graduates who have never created value for anyone outside a classroom.
Youth-led changemaking inverts that order. Students receive a small amount of real money and four weeks to create something real, before anyone has assessed them. Institutions that organise themselves around this become Changemaker Hubs, and can prove what changed.
The pilot
What the four weeks actually look like
A pilot is deliberately small. One cohort, one term, no change to your curriculum or governance before you have seen it work.
- Step 1
Before you start
A short briefing for the faculty or staff who will run it, and an open invitation to students. No selection, no applications, no pitching.
- Step 2
Day one
Teams of 3 to 5 form and receive their trust-based investment, roughly $25 per team, with no strings attached. That single act is the whole intervention.
- Step 3
Weeks one to four
Teams identify a real problem or opportunity, build something, and sell or deliver it to real people. Weekly check-ins keep the data honest; nobody is pushed for profit.
- Step 4
The close
Teams report what they earned and who they served. Profitable teams return the investment and half of that first profit to seed the next cohort. Everything beyond belongs to them. A team that lost the money owes nothing.
Does it work
The model has two decades behind it.
young people engaged over five years through YES Network Pakistan, where 92% of teams created social and economic impact (programme data).
of 155 youth teams in Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe turned a profit, and 95% repaid their trust-based investment.
institutions have opened space for youth-led changemaking, including 80 universities.
What certification gives you
Real evidence from the field
Baseline and endline measurement of every cohort, in a form that works for boards, accreditation bodies and donors.
Local capability
Trained faculty and student ambassadors, plus facilitator certification for your own people, so you are not dependent on us.
A visible standard
Certification marks what your institution actually does: it trusts young people before they have proof, and it shows the results.
Recognition that travels
A lighthouse role gives your institution visibility with funders, partners and prospective students who care about what graduates can actually do.
The three stages
Certification follows practice, not paperwork
The stages follow the adoption pathway of the model's creator, Ali Raza Khan (YES Network Pakistan). You move up by documented practice: what your students actually did, not what your strategy paper says.
Pilot
One four-week cycle at your institution, run with us and honestly measured. No certification required to start, and no institutional redesign. Only one commitment: trust students before they have proof.
Certified Changemaker Hub
The challenge is embedded in your term rhythm, your own faculty and student ambassadors are trained, and your evidence (activation rate, value created, people served) is documented and published.
Lighthouse
Your institution trains facilitators beyond its own walls and anchors youth-led changemaking in your region. You persuade others through evidence rather than marketing.
What it asks of you
- Money: the trust-based investment is roughly $25 per team, and most of it comes back into a revolving fund. The budget is not what stops institutions.
- People: one or two staff who run the cycle, which we train and support through your first cohort.
- Permission: the real cost. Students need to act without an approval process, and access to space and tools without a gatekeeper.
Exact figures depend on your context, whether the launch is on campus or fully remote, and how many teams you start with. We put concrete numbers on the table in the first conversation.
Start the conversation
30 minutes, nothing to prepare, and you decide what happens next. We reply within two working days with concrete time options.