Faced with a world marked by climate instability, social inequity, and rapid technological disruption, young people today confront a daunting challenge: how can they build meaningful, future-ready lives that contribute positively to society while navigating uncertainty? The Gaia Changemakers Program (GCP) answers this by molding high school students into thoughtful, action-oriented leaders. 

GCP is a transformative three-week summer experience, running from July 14 to August 1, 2025, that travels through Zurich, Prague, and the Swiss Alps. Designed for ages 15 to 19, it combines adventure with academia, fusing systems thinking, sustainability principles, and creative problem-solving in real-world settings. Participants explore topics like sustainable energym visiting solar startups, nuclear plants, and distributors, and circular economies through interactions with companies such as Freitag, Patagonia, and Planted. 

Students engage with local and global challenges using a “Designathon” format, applying design-thinking in collaboration with scientists, artists, and social entrepreneurs, producing public-facing work like murals that spark environmental conversations. Rooted in the Inner Development Goals, the program promotes cognitive, team, and personal growth, including reflection, empathy, communication, and resilience. 

Accommodation ranges from semi- to fully residential options in high-standard hostels, with full packages covering meals, transport, weekend adventures, and glacier concerts. The faculty includes founder Diya Kanoria (Cambridge, Duke, UCL alum), environmental science specialist Myrto Vandersee, and learning designer Diana Cianelli Gabriel, supported by vetted staff with first-aid training. 

By challenging students to confront global issues experientially, GCP equips them with leadership, adaptability, and creativity, the very qualities sought by top universities and employers. It transforms uncertainty into opportunity, inspiring participants to become the changemakers the world critically needs. 

An Expedition Beyond the Ordinary 

The Gaia Changemakers Program is no ordinary summer camp. Over 3 immersive weeks, participants aged 15–19 embark on a life-changing voyage through Zurich, Prague, and the Swiss Alps, a curriculum that artfully interweaves real-world exploration, personal transformation, and global engagement. Blending structured workshops with spontaneous discovery, students evolve into confident leaders, equipped with the agility and ethical mindset required in an ever-changing world. 

Rigorous cognitive training sharpens skills in systems thinking, critical inquiry, and creative problem‑solving. In group settings, participants refine active listening, collaboration, and conflict resolution, while also learning persuasion, public speaking, and empathy, crucial tools for tomorrow’s changemakers. This transformative experience is further reinforced through cultural immersion: breakfasts overlooking Zurich, brainstorming in Prague cafés, and alpine discussions under open skies. 

Yet the magic lies in how these elements interconnect. Students meet energy innovators, visit solar startups and nuclear plants, then gaze at Alpine glaciers through the combined lenses of science, creativity, and ecology. They encounter circular‑economy pioneers like Freitag, Patagonia, and Planted, probing sustainability in business, culture, and daily consumption. Along the way, their internal landscapes grow as richly as the external: gratitude, reflection, confidence, and a sense of purpose become as vital as any new skill. 

By journey’s end, in a ceremony marked by a collective mural on a Swiss village, students stand changed. Their experiences in three unique environments, urban centers, historic cities, and wild terrain, have fused into one exciting story of adaptability and vision. This expedition is not just a summer trip; it’s the beginning of a lifelong mission as stewards of a planet in need of conscious leadership. 

Grounded in Gaia: Philosophy That Fuels Purpose 

“Gaia” is not just a name, it’s the intellectual heartbeat of the program. Inspired by the Gaia Hypothesis of Earth as a self-regulating organism, the curriculum mirrors this holistic perspective in everything it does. Just like Earth’s co‑dependent systems, each component of the program, from self‑discovery workshops to energy-sector immersions, is deeply interconnected, teaching students the power of systemic thinking. 

At its core are four pillars: 

• Self-discovery and Development – nurturing awareness of personal values, emotional health, strengths, and aspirations, encouraging alignment with sustainability principles. 
   

• Inquiry-based Learning – empowering learners to ask sharp questions, engage in deep research, and apply critical thinking, holding curiosity as a central virtue. 
   

• Contextual Learning – moving theory from the abstract to the lived reality through guided experiences in ecosystems, urban environments, and cultural settings. 
   

• Community Partnerships – forging strong ties with local businesses, NGOs, and experts to ground action in real-world impact and collective effort. 

This philosophy underscores an essential idea: leadership isn’t a lone journey, it’s woven through teams, societies, and the planet. By live-testing systems thinking, from energy grids to supply chains, in Zurich’s solar startups, Prague’s automotive electronics, and Alpine ecosystems, students internalize complexity, interconnection, and unintended consequences. At the same time, they practice within a values‑driven culture, cultivating empathy, humility, resilience, equity, and integrity, characteristics deemed essential for sustainable, ethical action. 

This philosophy turns a summer program into a living lab, forging lifelong principles and a mindset calibrated for collective leadership. The Gaia framework isn’t just learned, it’s lived, as students adopt its metaphor of Earth’s harmony into their sense of identity, purpose, and mission. 

Designed for Deep Transformation 

Transformation thrives through intentional design. At GCP, each day is carefully structured to balance intellectual challenges, experiential immersion, and community belonging. Students pivot between engaging speakers, hands-on designathons, company site visits, art installations, and performance arts, with every location, city street, forest trail, mountaintop, offering a new context for meaning and insight. 

The program’s dynamic tapestry includes: 

• Educational Company Visits — ranging from renewable-energy sites in Switzerland to automotive electronics facilities in the Czech Republic, situating learners at the forefront of sustainability. 
   

• Guest Talks — featuring leading innovators in climate science, art, tech, and leadership who challenge assumptions and expand worldview. 
   

• Transdisciplinary Workshops — where creative problem solving meets design-thinking in real-time solutions to environmental and social challenges. 
   

• Music, Art & Mural Projects — using creative expression to process learning, build cohesion, and ignite social dialogue, culminating in a public mural in a Swiss alpine village. 
   

• Outdoor Adventures — hikes to glacier venues, concerts on ice, alpine picnics, lake swims, and Prague sightseeing, embedding reflection in the joy of presence and curiosity. 

A flexible accommodation model, whether semi-residential in Zurich or fully residential across all locales, ensures that every student’s comfort, safety, and immersion needs are met. The program’s rhythm, 9 am to 6 pm weekdays, mirrors a collegiate structure, reinforcing commitment, discipline, and time‑management skills. Weekends pulse with optional excursions in Zurich, Prague, or mountain hikes, further strengthening interpersonal bonds and inter-cultural awareness. 

This blend of structure and spontaneity cultivates adaptability, resilience, and curiosity, capacities essential for global citizenship. Students emerge not only skilled but alive to possibility, ready to navigate uncertainty with intentionality and creativity. 

Real-World Application: Sustainability in Action 

Throughout their journey, participants bridge theory with real-world impact. They engage with pressing global issues, sustainable energy, circular economies, creative activism, and innovation for climate solutions. 

A select few program highlights: 

• Sustainable Energy Exploration — visits to solar startups, nuclear plants, and energy distributors generate an understanding of the systemic complexity behind urban energy transitions, provoking big-picture thinking. 
   

• Art as Activism — inspired by glaciers in the Swiss Alps, students fuse science with creativity. Under the mentorship of scientists, artists, filmmakers, and musicians, they conceptualize social impact, culminating in a communal mural that channels learning into public awareness. 
   

• Circular Economy Insights — hands‑on conversations with Freitag, Patagonia, Planted, and APAGCoCyst (BMW/Porsche partner in the Czech Republic) highlight what true circularity requires—from sourcing to consumer behavior. 
   

• Designathon for the Future — teams use design-thinking frameworks to tackle real environmental and social challenges, shifting from classroom reflection to action-oriented prototyping. 

Each layer of this experience is interwoven: visits build knowledge, workshops frame design, creative projects cement awareness, and designathons launch solutions. This blend ensures participants graduate with both the mindset of inquiry and the habit of doing. They don’t just speak about change, they model it, prototype it, animate it. 

Through this real‑world immersion, students uncover that sustainability is not an academic discipline, it’s a multi-layered ecosystem of ethics, business, policy, art, and social justice. They learn that lasting impact requires systems thinking, collaboration, and values-based leadership. 

Legacy and Lifelong Impact 

As July draws to a close atop a Swiss mountain, the three-week journey finds its full circle: participants, once strangers, are transformed into a global cohort of young changemakers. The ritual of unveiling the communal mural, a creation of vision, purpose, and voice, becomes both celebration and vow: this learning will ripple outward. 

Beyond visible outcomes, the program plants seeds for lifelong engagement: 

• College & Career Compass — with top-tier leaders and university guidance, students leave with sharpened résumés, compelling narratives, and connections that will fuel further exploration. 

• CAS & IB Credibility for International Baccalaureate candidates, the program doubles as meaningful Creativity, Activity, Service content, earned through purpose-driven learning. 

• Network of Changemakers: Alumni join a vibrant ecosystem of peers, mentors, and organizational partners aligned on sustainability, purpose, and impact. 

• Financial Access & Inclusion, facilitated by scholarships from the Peter Gabriel Foundation, the program broadens access, fostering equity and diversity in sustainable leadership. 

Under the guidance of Make The Change, a pioneer in progressive, values-driven education, and founder Diya Kanoria, who transitioned from IB science teacher to Cambridge‑trained educational innovator, the program embodies the ethos it teaches. Supported by stellar facilitators like Myrto Vandersee, Diana Cianelli, and Austina Kang, and corporate partners such as Steamed Playground and Netpathie, each cohort receives world-class mentorship grounded in empathy, collaboration, and systems thinking. 

In essence, the Gaia Changemakers Program delivers more than an experience, it instills a lifelong orientation toward service, innovation, and global citizenship. Graduates leave not just with memories, but with a living framework: a voice, a mindset, and a network ready to move the world forward. 

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