How 15 projects are redefining education and engagement for people of all ages

Among the 2026 crop of World Changing Ideas, education—rightly—concerns a lot of honorees, and all of them show that education touches people at all stages of life. More than that, they show that there is no one approach to education—that both using cutting-edge tech and going old-school teaching skills in a hands-on way can address the world’s learning needs. For example, there’s Trust Circle, which uses AI to help students monitor their mental health, and then there’s Hot Bread Kitchen, which is working with hospitality companies to teach their frontline workers to be managers of the future. Like their fellow honorees, they are examples of education where outcomes are prioritized over method. Winners 1 Million Women in Design and AI (1MW), UMO Design FoundationIf AI is going to reshape society, it would be better if the people building it were more inclusive and representative of the global population. That’s the argument of 1 Million Women in Design & AI, which aims to help a million women gain the skills to participate in an AI-driven economy by 2030 through camps, digital content, AI tools, and mentorship. This year, the initiative trained nearly 10,000 women in collaboration with colleges and nonprofits, reaching women with urban, rural, and low-income backgrounds. Now the organization will scale this curriculum to expand globally—with the workshops implemented by local partners—and reach its goal numbers. AI-powered mental health for children, TrustCircleTrustCircle—an AI-powered platform to help schools improve the emotional health of their students—asks kids to give two minutes to daily self-reflection. The idea is to identify struggling students early enough to intervene and also to build resilience and introspection in the entire student body. The platform now reaches 1.5 million students around the world, including in Hawai’i, where it’s serving 200,000 public school students, and in tribal and low-resource communities