Beyond Transactional Service—Seeing the Wisdom in Transformational Community Engagement
An interview with Aaron Moniz, Co-Founder of Inspire Citizens, including helpful resources
In a focused exploration, Aaron Moniz, Co-Founder of Inspire Citizens, shares timely insights to inspire thinking around the IB Middle Years Programme’s shift from Service as Action to Community Engagement. With changes currently in beta testing and full implementation expected in coming years, Aaron brings a practical, field-based perspective, shaped through his team’s ongoing work with schools already moving toward early adoption.
The goal of this series is to equip educators, regardless of their affiliation with the IB, to move beyond transactional service as they deploy truly transformational community engagement approaches.
As international schools prepare to adapt to the IB’s refreshed targets, one thing is clear: this shift represents more than a rebranding exercise. It is a call to fundamentally rethink how young people engage with their communities.
Taking a Hard Look at How Service Has Been Defined
The reframe from Service as Action to Community Engagement marks a deliberate shift away from acts of charity or compliance-based service hours toward sustained, inquiry-driven relationships. According to Aaron, the need for this clarification has been long overdue. In his experience, educators often recognize when something feels misaligned. Many want to pursue best practices, but face tension when service is oversimplified—reduced to annual fundraisers or bake sales.
These familiar activities, he explains, are often mistaken for service but lack the depth and reciprocity that community engagement demands. “That’s a poor definition of the term ‘service,’” he says. “In fact, it’s better defined as charity.” Without pedagogical clarity, even well-meaning schools can find themselves trapped in cycles of performative action that do little to serve students or community partners in meaningful ways.
Seeking a Supportive Framework: The Empathy to Impact Cycle
To help schools navigate this transition, Aaron highly recommends using a service cycle with which to frame the approach. He explains, “There are several valid service cycles available to choose from with the best ones promoting equity and collaboration among partners.” Inspire Citizens team members lean toward using the time-tested Empathy to Impact framework—a defined cycle that guides students and educators in building authentic partnerships and purposeful actions.
This overview of the Empathy to Impact framework shows how a holistic approach supports community engagement as a naturally integrated element rather than a bolted-on feature.
The Empathy to Impact service cycle offers a time-tested framework which supports community engagement.
Able: Ever mindful of existing learning standards and learning outcomes, this stage of the cycle seeks to deepen learning while resonating, where applicable, with ICSA, ISTE, ATLs and 21 Century Thinking skills or even in-house interdisciplinary standards, there is potential to build a year-on-year model that is truly sustainable. If being done in a co-curricular setting, it’s important to ensure that learning outcomes or skills are clearly identified in order to keep the “learning” in Service Learning.
Care: The process begins by establishing an area of inquiry. “This builds purpose into the plan,” explains Aaron. Students are introduced to rich domains of learning that have scalable significance, such as sustainable development, social justice and anti-bias, and harmony with nature to name a few.
Impact: Setting the direction for impactful engagement offers the chance, as a team or teacher leader, to identify which type of action is strongly linked to a summative assessment or summative learning goals. Then, a review of a school’s community partners list (or community assets map) offers an opportunity to identify an organization that matches the unit while embodying the principles of reciprocal action. The 4 types of service–and the Inspire Citizens Action Menu–are freely available here.
Aware: This stage sees students supported as they authentically investigate the issue they are exploring within their community. “The key here is identifying authentic needs, among root causes, to ensure deep impact,” explains Aaron. “Teachers help students analyze and embed their findings keeping their learning journey and action steps targeted and impactful.” Authentic awareness emerges as students employ critical media literacy, active listening and interviewing, data literacy and more.
Reflect: Importantly, any solid framework emphasizes the need for reflection—consistently and intentionally—throughout the entire process. “Without sincere reflection opportunities embedded throughout,” Aaron explains, “this may indicate that a unit is stuck in a performative mode.” Reflection invites students to consider how their beliefs, values, and sense of responsibility are evolving as they navigate real-world relationships and challenges.
“The challenge for educators is to figure out a strong how of reflection that is intentional–not onerous–and is available in a variety of formats to suit the learner,” says Aaron. “And selecting a what of reflection is a chance to tap into the potential of school-specific learner profiles, approaches to learning, schoolwide learner outcomes or graduate profiles to really measure evidence-based growth toward impact that is mission-focused.”
While the IB’s enhanced framework is still taking shape, Aaron notes that the Empathy to Impact cycle fills a practical gap. “The IB is looking down the road to a published model,” he explains. “But the advanced schools are already employing effective community engagement strategies for their current learners.”
Operationalizing Community Engagement
Schools like the American International School of Dhaka continue to innovate in their approach to service learning and community engagement. They’re combining on-the-ground community awareness with professional support from a team of professional facilitators to drive schoolwide excellence that meets their IB targets. Inspire Citizens’ co-founder Aaron Moniz (above in white shirt) is seen engaging students on a journey of self-reflection and empowerment as part of a widesweeping multi-year plan of development. (image supplied)
What’s ultimately being asked of schools is not a better event, but a better relationship. The shift is from “doing for” a community to “learning from and acting with” them. Schools like the American International School of Dhaka (AISD) are already embracing this ethos, replacing traditional advisory blocks with structured programs which embrace community engagement principles across their middle and high school divisions. And, embedded in their MYP program, Seoul Foreign School continues to pilot and beta test a robust IB-aligned community engagement approach that leads the region.
In these workshop-like blocks, time is intentionally carved out for students to build relationships, engage in sustained inquiry, and co-create projects that align with community-identified needs. This dedicated space also allows reflection practices to become routine rather than rushed—empowering students to build lasting habits of empathy, curiosity, and civic responsibility.
The message is clear: with thoughtful systems and clear models, schools can move beyond the comfort of legacy events and begin shaping experiences that are equitable, authentic, and aligned with global citizenship goals. If this sounds like doing more, it is more accurately described as doing what we already do… but better. Community engagement offers a viable path to a more relevant and exciting approach.
Readers who are ready to continue their journey toward an actionable understanding of Community Engagement may wish to explore the Empathy to Impact option as a means to establish a service cycle in their school communities. This link offers more depth and examples.