The Global Impact Diploma (GID)
Consciousness in Action
The Global Impact Diploma (GID) is an internationally recognized program that equips students with in-demand professional competencies and then provides them with opportunities to apply those competencies in an authentic setting.
How Does It Work?
This two-year capstone sequence will be available to students in 11th and 12th grade starting in 2026-27. By providing courses, projects, and activities that focus on agency, meaningful learning, and well-being, the GID positions students to thrive.
It is founded on the premise that students need three things to thrive:
Agency
The capacity to direct their own learning. Through self-directed projects and challenges, students will choose the path their learning takes.
Meaningful Learning
Well-being
There are five courses/experiences at the heart of the Global Impact Diploma:
Leadership
In this course, students learn to lead themselves and their own learning while gaining the tools needed to empower others toward meaningful change. They also learn to identify problems they want to help solve, empathize with stakeholders, look for leverage points of change, and measure their impact to make their work truly matter.
Entrepreneurship
Using design thinking, students engage in a hands-on project where they conceptualize, pitch, and develop their own business ideas. Along the way, they learn how to solve problems, create real value, and build entrepreneurial, impact-focused mindsets.
Internships
Most of us discover our pathways to impact through trial and error. This course helps students start that journey by prototyping and testing a profession that they want to explore. With our support, they’ll find an internship in the local or global community and contribute at least 40 hours of their time to helping that organization.
Impact Project
An evolution of our current Global Solutions class, the Impact Project challenges students to develop innovative solutions to social issues and create meaningful change. This is the student’s opportunity to fully lead a project from start to finish. By the end of the course, they will contribute positively to our community and understand how to create and sustain social change.
Imperfect Art of Living
Students connect concepts from psychology, literature, and philosophy to learn what makes humans flourish, and they use design thinking to generate positive changes in themselves and others.
A True Capstone Experience
Finally, as a culmination of their experience, students will curate an Impact Portfolio that includes artifacts of their work across classes, as well an Impact Exhibition that allows them to share their work with GID schools around the world.
Together, these courses and experiences provide opportunities for students to cultivate the exact skills that world economic leaders say they’ll need.
At the end, they’ll have earned two diplomas and be uniquely qualified to share their stories with Admissions teams and employers.
Self-Development
It’s also the perfect complement to the deep thinking and inner work our students already do in meditation. This program invites them to take the benefits of that practice and apply it in the real world, making an impact that ripples beyond their own self-development.
The GID starts with the presumption that students can do more than survive school: they can thrive at school. In a world where teenagers are experiencing unprecedented pressure to be something they’re not, this diploma gives them permission to be themselves, and the tools they need to do it.
Program Timeline
2026-2027
- Leadership (11th grade)
- Impact Project (11th and 12th grade)
- Positive Psychology (11th grade)
- Internships (11th and 12th grade)
2027-2028
- Entrepreneurship (12th grade)
Global Impact Diploma Schools
