From Service Learning to Meaningful Community Engagement
A Curriculum Design Guide for Inspired Educators
The Challenge
This resource addresses the challenge of effectively integrating community engagement into school curricula.
While many schools highlight service in their mission and strategic plans, implementation often remains inconsistent, leaving engagement siloed as extracurricular or compliance-based activities. The IB MYP shift from Service Learning to Community Engagement calls schools to move beyond transactional projects toward sustained, inquiry-driven relationships with authentic partners.
Our goal is to ensure that all students experience meaningful community engagement, embedded in curriculum and supported by structured frameworks. By moving from “doing for” to “learning from and acting with” communities, students can develop empathy, agency, and the skills to create lasting impact.
Who is this resource for?
This guide is designed for educators, school leaders, and curriculum developers who are ready (or required) to align with the IBMYP’s shift from Service Learning to Community Engagement or meet other accreditation goals. It is especially valuable for schools committed to embedding authentic, reciprocal partnerships into learning, ensuring students develop the mindsets and actions that define Global Citizenship.
While inspired by the IB reframe, our work at Inspire Citizens and this guide is relevant for all educators, as its philosophy applies universally.
How to Use this Resource
Follow these next 5 steps to level up one of your own units, learning experiences, or programs today.
Step 1: Identify the Unit:
Review your yearly curriculum to find units that authentically connect with community engagement. Look for natural links between content, real-world issues, and opportunities for sustained inquiry.
Step 2: Engage with the Community
Map your local assets: NGOs, organizations, and businesses already addressing community issues. Identify partners who can provide authentic insights and reciprocal relationships.
Step 3: Identify an Authentic Need:
Frame your unit around a genuine community-identified need, aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This ensures projects avoid tokenism and instead build toward equity and long-term impact.
Step 4: Explore Examples:
Draw inspiration from sample units co-designed with Inspire Citizens, showcasing how schools have embedded meaningful community engagement into their MYP programs, as well as diverse whole school programs from Primary to High School.
Step 5: Plan Your Unit:
Use the Empathy to Impact cycle to structure your unit: starting from a place of empathy to build awareness, integrate skills/knowledge/dispositions, set impact goals, take informed action, and embed reflection. This framework ensures that community engagement is purposeful, sustainable, and transformational.