Every child has the potential to be a changemaker—someone who can recognize challenges in their community and take meaningful action to address them. At Teach For All, our purpose is to develop the collective leadership to help children realize this potential. This belief is the foundation of our work: when students develop the skills, empathy, and agency to lead, they not only transform their own futures but also contribute to stronger, more equitable societies.

With support from Audemars Piguet and in collaboration with First Book and Ashoka, the Time for Change initiative is helping to make this vision a reality. Across six countries and diverse contexts, we are equipping teachers with the tools to foster agency and leadership in their classrooms, amplifying the power of education as a force for collective transformation. Stories from Teach For All network partners Ensina Brasil, Teach For Nigeria, and Teach First (UK) reveal a common truth—when educators foster their students' sense of agency and empowerment, students discover their own potential to shape the world around them.

Students Stepping into Responsible Citizenship

The leadership of Ensina Brasil fellows helped launch the Jovem Cidadão (“Young Citizen”) project, an initiative that puts students at the heart of their local democracy. This project is a powerful example of locally rooted action, with students identifying and addressing needs right in their community of Águas Lindas de Goiás.

With their teachers’ support, students organized workshops on citizenship, public budgeting, and the structure of government. They led a “Popular Consultation,” gathering more than 3,000 responses from peers and community members to identify local priorities for the municipal budget.

Their work culminated in the approval of a groundbreaking resolution by the City Council that established the Jovem Cidadão program as official policy. Originally designed and implemented by Ensina Brasil fellows with students, the initiative was so impactful that local legislators institutionalized it as a public program for all young people aged 14 to 21 in the city—not only those in Ensina Brasil classrooms. While the bill does not guarantee new services or rights, it embeds a civic education program that will strengthen youth civic and political engagement across the city for years to come.

For many students, the experience changed how they saw themselves—not as passive observers of politics, but as active participants with the power to influence decisions. As one student reflected after presenting to council members, “I didn’t think people would listen to us—but they did.”

By creating the space and scaffolding for this project, Ensina Brasil fellows enabled students to practice citizenship in action—building confidence, collaboration, and agency that will extend far beyond the classroom.

Lighting the Way in Underserved Communities

In Nigeria, Teach For Nigeria fellows are demonstrating how changemaking can flourish even in the most under-resourced schools.

Golden Mamudu, a fellow teaching at Ise Junior High School, launched an after-school literacy program to support students struggling with reading and writing. Within weeks, classrooms once filled with hesitation were alive with students proudly arriving with notebooks and pens, eager to learn.

Golden also mobilized the school’s alumni association to provide 50 new desks and chairs, addressing a shortage that had long undermined learning conditions. More striking than the physical changes, however, has been the shift in students’ mindsets.

Joy, a student once known for frequent outbursts, is now described by her mother as calm, empathetic, and confident. Zainab, who once struggled to speak English, now contributes actively in class, inspiring her peers. And when the school still lacked enough furniture, it was a group of students who led their own advocacy effort—convincing the alumni association to donate an additional 100 chairs and desks.

“Time for Change is not only changing our students," Golden reflected, “it is changing our school community.”  And as one of his students proudly shared, “We didn’t wait for someone else to fix it—we made it happen.”

Golden’s journey demonstrates how teaching itself is leadership. While he opened the door for his students, their willingness to step through—taking ownership, solving problems, and modeling agency—proves that modeling leadership can ignite collective action.

Building a Culture of Student-Led Action

In the UK, Teach First is partnering with schools to embed changemaking within the culture of teaching and learning. At The Priory School in Southsea, Teach First alumna and secondary school teacher Rebekah Spaulding is leading the Game Changers curriculum, co-designed with students around six traits of a changemaker: leadership, community, resilience, creativity, positivity, and excellence.

What makes this approach powerful is not just the curriculum design but the opportunities it creates for students to act. Through Game Changer Pursuit Week and new student-led Action Groups, young people are now identifying challenges in their school and developing their own solutions.

As one student explained after leading a Game Changer project, “It gave us a chance to do something real—not just learn about change, but actually make it.”

For Rebekah, Time for Change has been a catalyst: “What struck me about Time For Change was how it made changemaking feel tangible. It inspired me to think about how we could take that same energy on the road with our own planned Game Changer roadshow.”

Her leadership has opened the space, and students are stepping in: collaborating, taking initiative, and shaping a school culture that reflects the values of changemaking.

A Shared Movement for Change

Though the contexts of Brazil, Nigeria, and the UK are different, stories like these converge around a shared lesson: teachers play a pivotal role in shaping the next generation of leaders. With the right support, students discover their voices, mobilize their peers, and begin transforming the systems around them.

This is the essence of Teach For All’s vision—equipping educators to nurture students’ holistic growth, including wellbeing, connectedness, awareness, agency, and academic mastery. Thanks to the partnership with Audemars Piguet and our collaboration with Ashoka and First Book, the Time for Change initiative is ensuring that more children around the world grow up not only prepared for the future but empowered to shape it.