Thriving Together
The Global Learner Agency Lab brings students from different parts of the world together around one shared mission: to use their agency to create and test one meaningful action that helps a group of people thrive in their context.
Many cultural perspectives. Student-led action around the world.
Students do not merely discuss agency. They exercise it.
Each team chooses a group of people, explores what might help them thrive, designs and tests a student-led action, learns with international partners, and documents what happened. The project is deliberately positive: it is not an audit of what is wrong with a school.
Choose a meaningful focus
Students identify a group they hope to support and an opportunity connected with belonging, learning, connection, contribution, digital life, health, purpose or community.
Take real action
Teams create, connect, serve, teach, research, advocate, celebrate or prototype. The action can be small, but it must be genuinely student-led.
Learn across cultures
International partners influence one another’s decisions. Each team shows at least one way that a global partner improved or changed its local action.
Use your agency to create and test one meaningful action that helps a group of people thrive in your context.
Shared global challenge for all participating student teamsSix ideas that shape the Lab
These principles help participants understand the educational thinking behind the experience without turning the project into a theoretical course.
Agency is more than choice
Choice means selecting from adult-created options. Agency involves forming a purpose, making consequential decisions, acting, adapting and taking responsibility.
Agency is relational
Students act with peers, adults, families and communities. Adults do not disappear; they create conditions, open doors and help students act responsibly.
Thriving is multidimensional
Thriving can involve health, connection, contribution, safety, learning, competence, agency and resilience. It is broader than happiness or mental health.
Culture changes meaning
Some contexts emphasize individual initiative; others emphasize collective responsibility, family or community harmony. The Lab treats these differences as learning.
Voice should lead to influence
Students need a safe space, support to express ideas, an audience that listens, and a credible pathway through which their contribution can matter.
Evidence should be authentic
Agency is demonstrated through plans, decisions, revisions, artifacts, feedback, adaptation and reflection—not through a multiple-choice test.
Discover → Connect → Imagine → Act → Adapt → Share
Every team follows the same six-stage cycle. Local freedom remains high, while a common structure allows meaningful international comparison.
Discover
Explore what thriving means locally through stories, conversations, images, traditions and observation.
Connect
Choose a group to support and exchange perspectives with students in other countries.
Imagine
Design a feasible action, gather feedback and improve the idea before implementation.
Act
Implement or test the action locally and document what students themselves decide and do.
Adapt
Use evidence, obstacles and feedback to revise the approach. Changing direction is part of agency.
Share
Create an Agency Story and contribute to a global map of student-led action.
Collaboration that changes decisions
Schools are organized into small, age-aligned circles of approximately four teams from contrasting contexts. The same partners remain together throughout the experience so that relationships and trust can grow.
The Global Atlas of Student Agency
Each team contributes a map entry with its location, cultural understanding of thriving, group supported, action, international partner, evidence of contribution and student reflection.
The Agency Story
A short multimedia account of the choices students made, the action they took, how they adapted and what they learned about agency, culture and contribution.
What students will demonstrate
Success is not defined only by the size of the visible outcome. A modest action can show powerful agency when students exercise judgment, respond to context and learn from evidence.
Initiative
Identifying and pursuing a meaningful opportunity.
Listening
Understanding people, context and different perspectives.
Decision-making
Making genuine choices and explaining the reasoning behind them.
Collaboration
Sharing responsibility locally and learning with global partners.
Adaptability
Responding constructively to obstacles, feedback and new evidence.
Contribution
Creating something of genuine value for other people.
Cross-cultural learning
Recognizing differences without ranking or stereotyping contexts.
Reflection
Explaining what changed in the students’ thinking, skills and sense of agency.
Recommended background resources
These are useful for facilitators and older students. Teams do not need to read everything; the Lab can provide short adapted learning cards based on the core ideas.
OECD — Student Agency for 2030
A clear foundation for agency, co-agency, responsibility, purpose and cultural variation.
WHO / PMNCH — Adolescent Well-being
A five-domain framework covering health, connection, safety, learning, agency and resilience.
Lundy Model of Participation
A practical model built around space, voice, audience and influence.
UNICEF — Engaged and Heard!
Guidance for meaningful, equitable adolescent participation and civic engagement.
UNESCO — Meaningful Youth Engagement
Practical guidance for moving beyond tokenism and creating genuine roles for young people.
Review of the Literature on Student Agency
Useful for designing the portfolio, learning indicators and authentic assessment approach.
Council of Europe — Intercultural Competence for All
Guidance for inclusive communication, cultural learning and sustained school partnerships.
UNICEF Youth-Led Action Resources
A resource collection covering consent, participation, safeguarding and online engagement.
UNESCO — Generative AI in Education
A human-centred framework for privacy, ethical use, age appropriateness and meaningful application.
Resources the Lab should provide directly
1. What Does It Mean to Have Agency?
2. What Does Thriving Mean Here?
3. Our Context, Your Context
4. The Agency Action Canvas
5. The Evidence of Agency Portfolio
6. Ethical Storytelling and AI Guide
Ideas worth borrowing—without copying any one model
No exact equivalent combines the Lab’s full design. The following initiatives are especially useful for specific components such as student-led action, mapping, global collaboration, mentoring and evidence.
Good Life Schools
Positive framing around a good life, community, well-being and planetary considerations.
Visit project ↗Design for Change
A memorable Feel → Imagine → Do → Share process and a global archive of student stories.
Visit project ↗Roots & Shoots
Asset-based community mapping, small local action and celebration of contribution.
Visit project ↗iEARN Learning Circles
Stable international classroom groups that collaborate over time rather than exchanging finished products only.
Visit project ↗The Goals Project
A manageable six-week global structure with age grouping, weekly guidance, facilitators and reflection.
Visit project ↗Take Action Global
A synchronized global experience combining local inquiry, international connection, action and celebration.
Visit project ↗UNICEF UPSHIFT
Human-centred design, mentorship, prototype testing and—where possible—small implementation funding.
Visit project ↗Global Social Leaders
Strong attention to evidence, feedback, check-ins and recognition for courage, resilience, adaptation and learning.
Visit project ↗Global Youth Service Day
A broad action menu including service, advocacy, research, kindness, leadership and education.
Visit project ↗The World’s Largest Lesson
Age-banded, adaptable materials using film, art, poetry, storytelling, mapping and community action.
Visit project ↗A six-week global experience
The core should remain light enough for diverse schools to participate: approximately one shared activity per week, local action time, three international exchanges and optional extensions.
Discover thriving
Explore local meanings, stories, strengths and examples of thriving.
Choose and map
Select a group to support and create an asset-based Thriving Map.
Meet the Global Agency Circle
Compare contexts, assumptions and possible areas of action.
Imagine and refine
Design the local action, receive global feedback and improve the plan.
Act and adapt
Implement, document evidence and revise in response to what happens.
Share agency
Exchange results, create Agency Stories and publish entries to the global atlas.
Design commitments
Students look for opportunities to contribute rather than auditing school failures.
Adults create boundaries and support without taking ownership of the action.
Teams compare meanings and practices without ranking contexts.
International partners must influence one another’s thinking or decisions.
Portfolios include decisions, process, adaptations, contribution and reflection.
Consent, safeguarding, privacy and ethical publication are built in from the beginning.
Students decide; AI assists; students verify; use is disclosed.
Courage, listening, adaptation and learning are valued alongside visible impact.
One shared mission. Many local truths.
The most distinctive feature of the Lab is that students do not merely observe projects from other countries. They influence one another’s decisions while acting in ways that fit their own culture and community.
Agency gives it purpose.
Global collaboration gives it perspective.
Authentic evidence makes learning visible.