ACAMIS Student Leadership Conference — Shanghai

Social Innovation

What Have You Set in Motion?

Shanghai Community International School
Saturday, February 27, 2027

Become a Sponsor → | Other Locations: Shenzhen (Mar 6), Beijing (Mar 6)

About the Conference

The ACAMIS Student Leadership Conference on Social Innovation brings together student teams who are using service, creativity, and community insight to make a difference in their schools and local communities.

This one-day, in-person conference is designed for school teams of up to 5 students and 1 to 2 faculty advisers. Students will not only attend sessions. They will help shape the learning before the event, share their own work during the conference, and present what they learned afterwards.

At a time when schools are helping students move beyond participation toward purposeful action, this conference asks a simple question:

What have you set in motion?

From Service to Social Innovation

Students will explore how meaningful service begins with listening, develops through action, and improves through reflection and revision.

The conference will culminate with the Innovative Service Video Contest, where students create 60-second videos that tell the story of a service project they have launched or improved.

Strong videos will show how students have:

Identified a real need by speaking with those affected
Designed a project that responds to that need
Improved the project based on what worked and what did not
Shown how the benefits can continue beyond the first action

The conference will also help students understand what does not usually count as social innovation: solutions imposed from outside a community, projects that repeat existing ideas without improvement, service that offers only a short-term fix, or videos that do not show how students learned and adapted.

Intended Outcomes

By the end of the conference, participating teams will:

Identify genuine community needs by listening to the people most affected

Design or refine a service project that responds meaningfully to an identified need

Use reflection and evidence to improve a project and strengthen its long-term impact

Distinguish social innovation from short-term service or solutions imposed on a community

Communicate the story, learning and future direction of a student-led service project

Conference Journey

Before the Conference

Join two online sessions to explore the theme, share school experiences and help shape the conference content.

During the Conference

Take part in joint and separate student and faculty sessions, student presentations, team discussions and practical planning.

After the Conference

Submit a 60-90s video and join an online showcase to share what the team learned and how it will be applied in school.

Conference Moderator

Rushton Hurley

Rushton Hurley has worked and studied on three continents as a Japanese language teacher, school principal, teacher trainer, and inspirational speaker. He founded and directs the educational nonprofit Next Vista for Learning, which houses a free library of creative educational videos at NextVista.org. Rushton holds masters degrees in Education and East Asian Studies from Stanford University.

The author of three books, Rushton's work centers on inspiration and creativity, technology and leadership, avenues for engaging learning, the power of digital media and cutting-edge technology for collaboration, and personal and professional perspectives in a technology-infused, ever-changing world. He also works with WarmDemanders.com to provide focused, self-paced mini-courses for professional development, including a course for educators on ChatGPT for which several thousand people around the world have registered.

In the spring of 2023, Rushton joined the team at Junípero Serra High School as the Director of Design-Led Innovation. In that role, he co-teaches the Creative Solutions for the Global Good class and coordinates international projects between Serra and other fascinating schools around the world.

Rushton loves to travel, cleans up after his cats, and considers himself to have married up.