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Brown Students Building Systems of Care, Clarity, and Agency
Why the Systems Change Lab matters now — and how we’re standing with students
In November, we announced the launch of the Systems Change Lab at Brown University — a two-week, youth-led and mentor-guided process designed to help students map complex systems, identify what’s missing, and prototype pathways forward together.
The Lab was not designed in response to a single event. It was created because young people have been telling us for years that the systems they are inheriting — education, governance, media, health, economics — are no longer working as promised, and that they want tools, language, and support to redesign them.
What recent events on campus did was not create this work, but confirm its necessity.
They brought into sharp focus exactly why the Systems Change Lab was designed the way it was — and clarified where it needed to begin.
A Lab Designed for Moments Like This
The Systems Change Lab is built on a simple premise:
when systems fail, the people most affected should not be left alone — and they should not be treated as passive recipients of solutions.
Students are invited into a structured, facilitated process where they:
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name what isn’t working
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map the systems shaping their lives
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identify what’s missing
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and design responses together, supported by mentors and intergenerational partners
This work was always meant to be adaptable to place and moment. When students shared how recent events were impacting their sense of safety, agency, and ability to imagine the future, we listened — and allowed the Lab to begin there.
This wasn’t a pivot. It was the design doing its job.
Beginning with Safety, Care, and Agency
In systems work, sequencing matters.
You can’t meaningfully redesign systems if people don’t feel safe enough to think, connect, and imagine.
By allowing safety, care, and agency to become the first system addressed, the Lab creates the conditions for deeper work to follow — not only on crisis response, but on education, culture, governance, economics, and the many other systems students want to engage.
This approach reflects years of learning through Dream Tank: lasting systems change doesn’t come from imposing solutions, but from creating environments where people can think clearly, act collectively, and lead from lived experience.
Standing With Students — An Intergenerational Effort
Alongside the Lab, we’ve seen a natural call for intergenerational support — alumni, parents, educators, and community members asking how they can stand with students in ways that are grounded, respectful, and real.
In response, a student-supported GoFundMe campaign has been launched to help resource the work with care — supporting coordination, facilitation, documentation, and student stipends so participants can engage fully.
👉 Support the campaign here:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/brown-students-building-systems-of-care-clarity-and-agency
This campaign is not about rescuing students or rushing to answers. It’s about ensuring that students have the time, space, and support to do the work they are already stepping into.
Looking Ahead
The Systems Change Lab runs January 6–17, 2026, culminating in a live Global Broadcast on January 17, where students will share what they’ve learned, designed, and proposed — just before returning to campus.
This Lab is both a complete experience in itself and the foundation for a model that can be adapted in other schools, communities, and bioregions — before systems break, during moments of disruption, and as futures are rebuilt.
What’s happening at Brown is not an exception. It’s a signal.
And the question before all of us is not whether young people are ready to lead — they already are — but whether we are willing to stand with them as they do.
With care,
Dream Tank
Systems Change Lab @ Brown University
How Stories Built My Capacity for Empathy
In 2023, Heidi Cuppari and Summer Gould launched EmpowerGen: Amplifying the Voice of the Future — a collaborative effort designed to spotlight the creativity, insights, and lived experiences of young people. From the beginning, the column was co-authored by Dream Tank founder Heidi Cuppari, with contributions from teens and young adults whose perspectives are too often overlooked. From day one, the purpose of EmpowerGen was clear: shift the narrative about today’s youth away from fear and decline, and toward possibility, agency, and hope.
Rather than echoing the doom-and-gloom messages dominating conversations about the next generation, EmpowerGen explores what happens when we trust young people as creators of meaningful change. As highlighted in articles like Beyond Doom and Gloom: Teaching Climate Change to Foster Empowerment, framing youth through a lens of capability and imagination has real impacts on mental health, motivation, and overall well-being.
Now, as Chief of Staff with Dream Tank, I have been given the exciting opportunity to step into a new role as the editor of Dream Tank’s EmpowerGen column! With my new position, I hope to amplify the voices of youth across Boulder, and globally!
My first article, “How Stories Built My Capacity for Empathy,” examines the role of literature and language in shaping my perspective and connection to humans around the world. I have always credited novels, stories in general, as some of the deepest teachers in my life. In this piece, I reflect on how growing up in a place that felt culturally and socially homogenous left me with a limited window into the wider world — and how literature quietly became that window. Through books, languages, and the characters who lived far beyond the boundaries of my own experience, I learned to feel with people I might never meet. Stories became a way of expanding my imagination, my understanding, and ultimately my capacity for empathy.
The article traces how this early relationship with storytelling shaped both my academic path and my sense of responsibility in the world. Reading does not just help me escape, it helps me connect, question, and soften. The research guiding my article taught me that empathy isn’t an abstract ideal; it’s something we can build through intentional exposure to perspectives different from our own. I hope this reflection encourages others to keep turning toward stories as sources of connection, insight, and transformation.
Read the full piece on About Boulder here. 💛
How the Planet Protectors Stepped Up for Earth
I’m sure I can speak for many people when I say that climate change is scary, especially when you’re young. Personally, I remember my dad speaking about climate change in another room, and I was on the verge of tears, really when anyone brought it up, and I felt an impending sense of doom that no kid should feel.
That’s why I teamed up with Dream Tank to create a program for kids 6-9 years old to turn that climate fear into confidence. With months of hard work, our team came up with a concrete plan, Planet Protectors, and made it a reality.
We had 10 amazingly brilliant young kids attend, who knew little about climate change (apart from it being scary), but they all learned about recycling, changes in weather, and more, and each of them reported being more knowledgeable and more confident about their own abilities to stop climate change by the end of it.
How They Did It
Our plan was to have each kid come up with their own solution to climate change, to build the confidence within themselves that they can make a positive impact on our world.
On day one, we opened up their creative spirits by playing games, learning about some solutions that other young people have done to stop climate change, and brainstorming about their own solutions.
On day two, we started to prototype their solutions. Some kids built lego, some made beautiful art, and some used cardboard and popsicle sticks. That freeform creation really goes to show how creative these kids are, and that the sky’s the limit for them. When they started to finish up, we helped them put their projects on slideshows for them to present on the presentation day.
On day three/the pitch celebration, they made some final touches to their projects and presentations, and we took a nature break by the creek and had some lunch. Then the magic happened! All of the kids had the courage to stand up in front of a group of parents and some members of the community, and give a presentation on their climate solutions. It was spectacular, and I, the Dream Tank mentors, and all of the community members were inspired and learned so much, and were motivated to utilize our creative minds more often.
Overall, everyone had tons of fun, learned a lot, built confidence in themselves, along with making new friends. It was an amazing experience and we would love to run it again in the future, and if you’re a parent, teacher or anyone else who’d like to bring Planet Protectors to your community please reach out!
How You Can Help
In order to make Planet Protectors a reality we rely on donations! We wanted to make this camp accessible to everyone who signed up and we gave every Planet Protector a scholarship to attend. If you would like to help Planet Protectors continue as free for kids who sign up, please consider donating here.
Follow Dream Tank’s socials and be on the lookout for any upcoming events, or to sign up for a future Planet Protectors camp!
Thanks
I want to personally thank the Museum of Boulder for hosting Planet Protectors, Heidi Cuppari for her enthusiasm and massive help, and mentors Anya, Sophie, Pavel, Jenny and Cody for refining the program and being there to witness the wonderful kids and help them along their journeys, and of course thank you to our participants and their families for showing up with enthusiasm and bright ideas.
Co-Creating Systems Change at the Speed of Youth
Something extraordinary is brewing at Dream Tank… and it starts this winter.
In January 2026, a dynamic team of Brown University students will join forces with Dream Tank for an immersive, two-week Systems Change Lab. This isn’t just an internship. It’s not a bootcamp. It’s a winternship—where the mission is to co-create bold new blueprints for a more equitable, sustainable future.
We call it the Systems Change Lab—because we’re not tweaking the edges. We’re redesigning the whole thing.
What Is the Systems Change Lab?
The Systems Change Lab will be a collaborative space where Brown students and Dream Tank’s youth visionaries will prototype new models for tackling global challenges—from youth wellness to climate resilience, education transformation, and digital innovation.
But this is Dream Tank… so expect imagination, art, play, and purpose to collide in ways that traditional systems could never dream of.
Why This Matters Now
The world doesn’t need more top-down solutions. It needs youth-led ecosystems built from the ground up—rooted in wellness, creativity, and regenerative design. This Lab will be a microcosm of what’s possible when academic rigor meets youth imagination and systems thinking becomes joyful, actionable, and fun.
What We’re Building
Throughout the Winternship program, Dream Tank and Brown students will explore:
How to prototype a regenerative, youth-led accelerator from the soil up.
How to design infrastructure for global collaboration between dreamers, mentors, and makers.
How to embed systems change in every Dream Tank program, from local labs to global pitch stages.
This is just the beginning of a new chapter in how we do impact.
🚀 Join the Momentum
This January, we’re setting the foundation for something much bigger: a replicable Systems Change Lab model that can expand globally. Whether you’re a student, mentor, funder, educator, or Dream Tank fan—this is your moment to lean in.
We’re opening the doors for collaborators, mentors, artists, systems thinkers, funders, and youth leaders to plug into the magic of the Dream Tank x Brown Systems Change Lab.
If you’re ready to dream boldly and build bravely, fill out this form to join the movement. Let’s reimagine what’s possible—together.
Because this winter, we don’t just warm hearts—we ignite systems.
