On any given afternoon, you might find a group of seniors meeting with local nonprofits organizations, pitching sustainable business ideas, or organizing CPR workshops in classrooms. It’s not an extracurricular, it’s a graduation requirement.
At the heart of the school’s mission to educate thoughtful leaders lies the Innovation for Social Change (ISC) program, a senior capstone project that blends community engagement, creativity, and real-world problem-solving. As the class of 2025 prepares to graduate, they are not just reflecting on books and tests, they’re reflecting on the communities they’ve worked to improve. This is more than a class; it’s a launchpad for transformation.
The ISC course, led by advisor Ari Holsten, and Camilo Hoyos, guides seniors through the complex process of designing and executing a project that makes a local impact.
“My role is explaining what the process is and guiding them when they are making decisions,” Holsten said. “And also providing constructive feedback on whether their projects are feasible and how they can change it in order to make it more sustainable and achievable in the time.”
Students are required to identify a social issue and create an innovative, actionable solution. That comes with challenges, especially when students are responsible for dividing work, communicating with external organizations, and managing their own timelines.
“The biggest challenge I’d say is potentially choosing bad team members, or not getting responses from the places they want to work with,” Holsten said. “Or not dividing up work well.”
But with those challenges come invaluable takeaways.
“A lot of skills, I think, presentation skills, organization skills, communication,” Holsten added. “Just learning how to persevere through the creation of a business or a project is just general, really important life skills.”
Principal Paul Navarra agrees. For him, the ISC isn’t just a nice addition to the curriculum, it’s essential.
“We felt it was necessary for seniors to have to identify opportunities for innovation that could lead towards social change and transformation,” Navarra said.
He emphasized that success isn’t measured just by execution, but by impact.
“I think the most important thing is: what impact has your project had on other people?” he said. “The second most important thing is the connection you make with that agency or that institution or that company.”
One senior, Isabel Jaramillo, took her project in a life-saving direction, organizing CPR and first aid trainings.
“I think that me and my partner both looked into things that we thought we had a common interest in and that we thought it was important,” Jaramillo said. “So that’s why we chose doing CPR first aid.”
But even the most meaningful ideas come with hurdles.
“We have faced a lot of issues,” she said. “For example, the timing, because in the school, it’s really hard to get all the people at once in a place without skipping class. And financing, because it’s really hard to get money from the school.”
Still, they’ve been collaborating with community partners like Secretaría de Envigado and Secretaría de Salud, which she hopes will expand the project’s reach.
Another ISC group, led by Sofia Trujillo, focused on sustainable tourism. Their goal? To create itineraries that promote community development.
“My ISC is about creating itineraries for a tourist company that involves helping communities or having the tours with communities,” Trujillo said.
She believes that the long-term potential of the project is strong. “Our idea is to also leave the itineraries with the tourism companies, so it will be very long lasting and it can be used many times.”
Trujillo also had advice for students who will go through ISC next year.
“I would recommend to start planning everything a little beforehand,” she said. “If you leave it all to the two months where you’re giving, it’s not gonna be enough time if you really want to have an outstanding ISC.”
For Santiago Lopez, the project intersected with his leadership role as student body president. His group worked with incarcerated soldiers, helping them find employment post-sentence.
“If I could restart my ISC project, maybe I would work with the ISC teachers so that we could start with more time,” Lopez said. “I would start maybe from quarter two to start thinking about the project, because I think that we are feeling a bit overwhelmed.”
Lopez believes ISC is one of the few courses where everything you’ve learned in high school converges into something that matters.
“I would say ISC is a very practical class that brings all of the knowledge from all the other classes and puts it together into one same topic,” he said. “Always working towards that sustainability and that innovation horizon.”
As seniors complete their final reflections, one thing is clear: ISC is not just about checking a box to graduate. It’s about stepping into the world, not just prepared to face it, but to change it.