Earn the
Global Impact Diploma

Why pursue the Global Impact Diploma?

The GID is for students who are driven to contribute. Instead of chasing grades or filling résumés, the GID asks you to explore something far more important: What will your impact be?

The GID doesn’t reward compliance; it builds agency and resilience. Our courses allow you to wrestle with real-world complexity, collaborate across cultures, and gain competencies that help you figure out who you are, what you care about, and how you want to make the world better.

Requirements of the GID:

  • Demonstrate proficiency in the six GID Competencies

  • Complete the GID Courses listed below

  • Build an Impact Portfolio that showcases your competencies, courses, and impact

  • Deliver a final Impact Exhibition to members of the community

Core
Competencies

  • I can take ownership of my learning and well-being, persevering through uncertainty to create meaningful contributions.

  • I can define and design tasks that are purposeful, and manage a project to create measurable impact.

  • I can understand and value others' perspectives, recognize their needs, and act with genuine care to make a meaningful impact.

  • I can generate ideas, products and solutions with people from diverse backgrounds, building inclusive, supportive communities that foster shared purpose, shared impact, and psychological safety.

  • I can maintain a learning mindset, engaging in authentic reflection to understand patterns in my thinking; identify strengths and areas for growth; and improve my learning, well-being, and impact on others.

  • I can communicate with clarity, empathy, and impact, ensuring that I both understand and am understood, even when perspectives differ.

Why competency-based?

Competencies are a declaration that who you are becoming matters more than what you can memorize. In the Global Impact Diploma, learning isn’t measured by one-off exams, but by your ability to drive your own learning, collaborate meaningfully, and create real-world impact.

Competencies reveal how you navigate uncertainty, respond to feedback, and grow through challenge.

In a world that rewards adaptability, resilience, and purpose, competencies aren’t a softer alternative to rigor; they are the new rigor.

The Global Impact Diploma is one of the first competency-based diplomas in the world, inspired by the great work of organizations like Melbourne Metrics, Inner Development Goals, and the World Economic Forum’s Future Jobs Report.

Core
Courses

What makes GID Courses different?

GID courses are designed to help students discover their pathway to impact. Each course inspires students with real-world, hands-on challenges.

Instead of marching through a syllabus, GID courses blur the line between school and life, asking students to apply ideas immediately, take intellectual risks, and make meaning through action. What makes GID courses different isn’t just what students learn, it’s that learning becomes personal, collaborative, and transformative.

To complete the Global Impact Diploma, students take a combination of the following courses:

  • 1 Foundations of Leadership for Impact course that is at the core of the GID

  • 2 Collaboration for Impact courses that are team-based

  • 2 Agency for Impact courses that are predominantly student-led

  • 2 Specialization for Impact courses that connect to each student’s interests

Leadership is at the heart of the Global Impact Diploma experience. In this course, students learn to lead themselves and their own learning while gaining 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.

GID Foundations of Leadership for Impact

GID Imperfect Art of Living

This interdisciplinary course has been connecting students and teachers from schools around the world since 2020. In the 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.

This course blends entrepreneurial thinking with advanced English language skills. A significant component of the course is the hands-on project where students 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.

GID Entrepreneurship for Impact

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. They are tasked with finding an internship in the community and contributing at least 40 hours of their time to helping that organization.

GID Internship for Impact

GID Impact Project

To culminate their GID experience, students develop innovative solutions to social issues, combining the competences, principles and skills to 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.

Specialization Courses

In addition to the courses above, students in the GID take two Specialization for Impact courses to deepen their knowledge in a chosen area. These are existing courses at GID schools (IB, AP, GOA, or bespoke courses).

For example, if a student is interested in STEM as their pathway to impact, IBDP Physics would be a great course to dive deeper into the field.