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The I CAN Summit for Eduheroes is to help celebrate, empower, and connect educators (Eduheroes) who are championing student agency and change making in their classrooms and communities, while exploring FIDS beyond DFC as a powerful pedagogical approach to reimagine teaching and learning.
FEEL: Understanding the Heart of the Teacher Experience
Many teachers across the DFC network feel isolated in their efforts to innovate, facing student disengagement, timetable constraints, and a lack of structured pathways to embed FIDS beyond standalone projects. Without a supportive community or ongoing tools, their initial enthusiasm fades, making it hard for DFC partners to re-engage them.
IMAGINE: A Global Platform for Teachers to Lead, Learn, and Reimagine Education
A teacher-centered summit that celebrates educator voice and expertise—where FIDS practitioners share and learn through global showcases, interactive exchanges, and design-thinking sessions with education and design masterminds.
DO: Turning Ideas into Action – In Classrooms and at the Summit
A dynamic space where teachers move from inspiration to implementation—sharing their work, and testing ideas. Through mini-talks and deep-dive conversations, the summit will spark action, sustain momentum, and strengthen a vibrant global teacher community.
Snežana Knežević, an elementary art teacher for 33 years, is passionate about fostering democratic competences in students. As a mentor to schools and advisor to the Ministry of Education, she advances democratic education, inclusion, and multicultural support. Committed to nurturing students’ potential, she strives to build joyful, collaborative schools where diversity is valued and children love to learn.
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Fede Carreres: PhD in Sports Science, Secondary School Physical Education teacher, and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education at the University of Alicante. Founder of MVP Sport, he has been designing and delivering training programs for over 15 years on positive development through sports and mindfulness, aimed at young people, educators, and families.
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Jin-Ning Elementary and Junior High School, Kinmen County, Taiwan With 15 years of teaching experience, Sophia Lin is Director of Academic Affairs at Jin-Ning Elementary and Junior High in Kinmen, Taiwan. Skilled in curriculum design and digital learning, she collaborates with DFC to create interdisciplinary curricula. She integrates local culture into learning, mentors teams,
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An energetic and adaptable Business Management, Accounts, and Commerce teacher, committed to real-world learning through case studies and practical examples. She values every child’s uniqueness, fosters creativity and collaboration, and integrates new-age technologies to build global competence while ensuring student success.
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Kiran Bir Sethi (Founder / Director of Design for Change) is a designer who became a teacher, a principal who grew into an education reformer and subsequently morphed into a social entrepreneur. A trained visual communicator from the National Institute of Design, she comfortably uses the language of design as a tool for user cantered innovation.
Kiran founded the award winning Riverside School in Ahmedabad, India, in 2001. Riverside, is viewed as a laboratory to prototype design processes that uses a systems approach to build a culture of empowerment, graduating young citizen leaders with an ‘I CAN Mindset’ – using their agency for the greater good. The values that nourish this mindset are the 5 E’s – Empathy, Ethics, Excellence, Elevation and Evolution – intentionally moving us to becoming HumanE, by design.
Nikita Desai joined as a member of the Design For Change - Global team in 2017. She has been with Riverside School for the past 20 years as a parent, an educator, Head of Riverside Learning Center and as a School Leader for Key Stage 2. (Grades 3 to 7) The fundamental philosophy that drives Nikita’s impeccable work ethic of hard work, dedication and user-centered design is, knowing that with adequate opportunities and support, every child can do anything and everything. Attuned to the Design for Change motto of ‘I Can’, she aspires to help all her students become aware of what bothers them and then to empower them to shift focus from vision to action. Nikita’s understanding of the pedagogy has been strengthened through training in Multiple Intelligence, Differentiated Instruction as well as an online course by the Harvard Graduate School of Education - ‘Teaching for Understanding’. She was invited to present Riverside’s philosophy by the Royal Education Council of Bhutan, Day Star School, Beijing, and Design Thinking at the Teach For All conference in London. She has also co-facilitated a workshop with Kiran Sethi at the Lego conference in Billund. She has been to schools in Rajkot, Anand, Sangamner, and Chittoor as an auditor for their pedagogy and practice. She has been the core team member in organizing the I CAN Children's Global Summit in Rome, where 2000 children from around 40 countries had a personal audience with Pope. Nikita enjoys interacting with people and meeting new minds, photography, listening to music, traveling, and trying different types of food.