From Design Studio to Global Movement

The "I Can" Revolution That Reached 2.2 Million Children

The Designer's Awakening

Picture a successful graphic designer in Ahmedabad, India, watching her young son come home from school deflated. The teachers stuck strictly to textbooks. Students who deviated from lesson plans faced punishment. Creativity was discouraged. Curiosity was stifled.

Most parents would have accepted this as "just how school works." Kiran Bir Sethi saw a design problem that needed solving.

"When my children started going to school, I noticed how unfriendly and rigid the atmosphere was," Sethi recalls. "I realized that most of India's hundreds of millions of schoolchildren were being educated in the same inflexible manner."

As a trained designer from the National Institute of Design, Sethi understood systems thinking. She saw that traditional education was producing compliance, not confidence.

Students were learning to follow instructions, not to solve problems.

The pattern she identified was profound: schools were designing helplessness, not empowerment.

The Laboratory of Change

In 2001, instead of complaining about the system, Sethi decided to redesign it. She founded The Riverside School in Ahmedabad with a radical premise: what if education focused on "quality of learning," "student well-being," and "empathy" instead of rote memorization?

This wasn't just theory. Sethi brought design thinking into every aspect of the school. Students didn't just read about social issues—they experienced them. In one memorable lesson, students rolled incense sticks for hours to understand child labor.

"It transformed them," Sethi later recalled. "Once that happened, they were out in the city convincing everybody that child labor just had to be abolished."

The results were remarkable. Riverside students began outperforming top schools in India in math, science, and English. But more importantly, they were developing something traditional schools couldn't measure: the belief that they could change the world.

The Framework That Changed Everything

By 2009, Sethi had distilled her approach into a simple, powerful framework that any teacher anywhere could use. She called it FIDS—Feel, Imagine, Do, Share.

Feel: Students identify problems that bother them and develop empathy for those affected. Imagine: They brainstorm solutions and take ownership of creating change.

Do: They implement their ideas with collaborative action.

Share: They inspire others by telling their story of change.

"We are offering the world a magic formula!" Sethi explains. "A simple four-step framework to make every child graduate with the 'I Can' mindset—not by chance, by design!"

This became Design for Change, launched with the bold goal of helping children drive change in their communities by unleashing what Sethi calls their "I Can superpower."

The movement started in India with 30,000 schools. Then Sethi gave a TED Talk that went viral. Suddenly, educators worldwide were reaching out, wanting to bring Design for Change to their communities.

The Global Explosion

Today, Design for Change has reached over 65 countries, impacting 2.2 million children and 65,000 teachers. It's become the world's largest movement of change by and for children.

The results have been "incredible," according to Sethi. Children have filled potholes, stopped child marriages, created community gardens, and solved water access problems. In every case, they've proven that age doesn't limit impact—mindset does.

The Systems Impact

What started as one parent's frustration with her son's school has created ripple effects across education systems worldwide:

Pattern 1: Design Thinking in Classrooms Schools across six continents now use FIDS to help students tackle real problems. The methodology has been endorsed by Stanford's d.school, Harvard Graduate School of Education, and premier institutes globally.

Pattern 2: Child Agency Movement Sethi's work sparked a broader recognition that children can be agents of change, not just recipients of education. This has influenced policy discussions about student voice and agency.

Pattern 3: Empathy-Driven Learning The emphasis on "Feel" as the first step has helped educators understand that emotional intelligence and empathy are as important as academic skills.

Pattern 4: Global-Local Connection Design for Change proves that simple frameworks can scale across cultures while addressing local challenges. Students in Kenya and students in Finland use the same process but solve different problems.

The Vatican Partnership and Beyond

In 2017, Sethi achieved something remarkable: she signed an agreement with the Vatican to implement Design for Change in over 460,000 Catholic schools worldwide. In 2019, she helped organize the first-ever All Faith "I Can" Children's Global Summit at the Vatican, with 2,500 children from 40 countries being blessed by the Pope.

This wasn't about religion—it was about recognizing that children's capacity for positive change transcends all boundaries.

The Ripple Effect of Empowerment

Sethi's impact extends beyond individual students. She's created what she calls a "contagious" effect of positive change:

For Teachers: 65,000 educators have learned to facilitate rather than dictate, creating more engaging classrooms.

For Communities: Local problems get solved by the people who understand them best—the children who live there.

For Education Policy: Governments are beginning to integrate design thinking and student agency into official curricula.

For Global Development: International organizations now recognize children as valuable problem-solvers, not just beneficiaries.

The Recognition Revolution

Sethi's work has earned numerous accolades: Ashoka Fellowship, Stanford's "Call to Conscience Award," Rockefeller Innovation Award, and the Earth Prize. But the recognition she values most comes from children themselves.

"When children start to understand that they can create change, everything shifts," Sethi explains. "They move from 'I can't' to 'I can,' and that transformation affects every aspect of their lives."

The movement continues to grow. Design for Change has been selected for HundrED.org's Hall of Fame as one of only seven innovations making exceptional global impact in education.

The Future of Learning

As artificial intelligence and automation reshape the job market, Sethi's focus on empathy, creativity, and problem-solving becomes even more relevant. The skills developed through Design for Change—emotional intelligence, systems thinking, collaborative action—are exactly what future leaders need.

"We cannot predict the future, but we can prepare children for it," Sethi says. "When they have the 'I Can' mindset, they're ready for anything."

The Pathfinder's Legacy

Sethi proves that transformation doesn't require massive resources or government approval. It requires one person willing to see problems as design challenges and children as capable change agents.

Her journey from frustrated parent to global education leader shows how personal pain can become universal purpose. By trusting children with real problems and real agency, she's created a generation of problem-solvers who believe in their own power to improve the world.

The question she poses for every educator and parent:

What if we stopped teaching children to follow instructions and started empowering them to create solutions?

In a world facing climate change, inequality, and uncertainty, Sethi's answer is clear:

Give children the tools to change what bothers them and watch them transform their communities and their sense of what's possible.

The "I Can" revolution started with one designer's insight and one school's experiment. Today, it's active in 65 countries because Sethi understood a fundamental truth: when children believe they can change the world, they do.

Design for Change: https://www.dfcworld.org/SITE

Design for Change YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/icandfc