Prototyping futures: the 2026 changemaker curriculum for grade 11 learners

If you have been following Belle and co.’s journey with high school learners in 2025, you would be familiar with our social enterprise curriculum. This year, the feedback received from participants shifted focus toward career aspirations and future preparation.

In response to these insights, the Belle and co. team redesigned the curriculum structure. The update moved beyond a routine refresh, resulting in a comprehensive revamp of the session delivery. The central addition to this iteration is the Changemaker’s Workbook.

The changemaker’s workbook and active research

The workbook operates as an activity book and reflective journal. It enables learners to identify personal strengths, skills, and passions, and translate them into career pathways.

As part of this learning experience, participants conducted active research to test their career ideas. Rather than traditional job shadowing, students engaged in practical discovery tasks, including:

• Interviewing professionals in their fields of interest.
• Researching career definitions and requirements online.
• Volunteering with local non governmental organisations.

These activities provided the students with the practical space to prototype their future career directions. The 2026 programme focused specifically on Grade 11 learners. This adjustment addresses the need for early career intervention before the academic demands of Grade 12 become primary.

Adjusted structure and increased momentum

The updated programme was delivered over three consecutive Saturday sessions across February and March 2026. This schedule altered the 2025 format, which included a three month gap between the first and second sessions. The compressed timeline helped participants maintain momentum and improved knowledge recall, allowing the facilitation team to build on previous lessons systematically.

Session learning objectives

Each of the three sessions targeted a specific area of development:

• Session 1 objective: Reframe problems into opportunities by mapping unique personal strengths and passions onto a chosen issue, while deepening self empathy through feedback.
• Session 2 objective: Develop a resilient mindset by reframing potential failures as data, encouraging experimentation in personal and professional growth, and outlining a small, actionable step to test within two weeks.
• Session 3 objective: Define a future path by connecting the prototype idea to a broader purpose, enabling learners to articulate why their work matters, and concluding with a vision board for 2026 and 2027.

A look at the new material

The introduction of the physical workbook changed how students engaged with the content, turning abstract ideas into tangible career plans.

Overall Feedback

The self-reflection feedback forms indicate that the workshops were highly effective in helping learners clarify their career paths, with a strong majority reporting an increase in design thinking awareness and a shift in how they view their futures. Participants consistently highlighted that the collaborative atmosphere and interactive exercises – such as prototyping, brainstorming, and mind mapping – were engaging and well-organised. While most students appreciated the inclusive space where everyone had an opportunity to participate, a few noted that the session felt long or rushed, and some shy individuals requested that facilitators avoid putting them on the spot. Overall, the learners highly valued the supportive, warm energy of the team and expressed that the insights gained made their future career aspirations feel far more achievable.

“In this session I enjoyed new skills a lot and learned what prototype is but today I am think differently about my future.” [Anon 1]

“The session went really well, I enjoyed the session, when we were playing at the beginning… learning more about future careers and what we can do to ensure that our futures are not completely planned but don’t seem as scary anymore.” [Anon 2]

“Me figuring more out about my career I figured more out through one of the Bertha centre members making a link for me.” [Anon 3]

A sneak peak at the new Changemaker’s Workbook and the wonderful facilitation team: