Creativity holds enormous power for fostering positive social change. Instilling this ideal in the next generation of creative professionals is core to Design Ignites Change, a collaboration between Adobe Youth Voices and Worldstudio. This annual program promotes and encourages talented high school and college students across the country to use design thinking and innovation to create messages for, and solutions to, pressing social problems.

Each year, participating colleges, universities and high schools engage with their students to create work that addresses powerful social topics ranging from issues of diversity, homelessness, hunger and gun violence to scarce water resources, sustainability and endangered species. The students are encouraged to develop actual projects that are visible in, and beneficial to, their own local communities; projects that will stimulate thought, dialog, action and ultimately change.

A major component of the initiative is a mentoring program through which college and university students, educators and creative professionals, work with underserved high school students to develop projects that will benefit their own communities, while giving them a voice around important social issues. The program will also serve to introduce these high school students to the creative professions as a career option.

The program and website will be heavily promoted to design, business and civic leaders; educators and students; and the general public. In this way, they will demonstrate how design and education can ignite innovation and positive change in our communities.