• Upon completion of the program, you will be a trained Junior Design Thinking Coach, having already applied the methodology.
• You’ll gain key skills through Design Thinking, such as innovation, customer focus, and implementation orientation.
• The intercultural experience at Impact Week will also help you gain different perspectives on problem solving as well as build your international network, which will be key to boosting your resourcefulness at work as well as creating avenues for future collaborations.
• In addition, Impact Week promotes local entrepreneurship and social innovation. We enable our local partners to apply Design Thinking themselves and run their own Impact Weeks.

Each participating team will work on one focus area. The students can choose their focus area in the application process and get matched accordingly. Then it is up to them to own the challenge and create an innovative idea to tackle it – always keeping the Design Thinking methodology at heart.

Our tracks follow the City of Baguio’s Research & Innovation Agenda, based on the Comprehensive Development Plan 2023–2029 and the Baguio 2043 Vision of a Livable, Inclusive, and Creative City.

1. Environmental Action: Circularity and Net Zero
Protecting Baguio’s green spaces, expanding forest cover, and reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. Focus areas include circular economy models, water and resource security, and urban agriculture for food security.

2. Social Protection and Inclusivity
Reducing poverty, distributing health services fairly across all 128 barangays, and aligning education with the digital economy. This track also covers cultural and indigenous heritage, neighborhood livability, and support for vulnerable communities.

3. Economic Expansion and the Creative Economy
Building on Baguio’s UNESCO Creative City status to grow local income and jobs. Focus areas include sustainable, low-volume tourism, closing the gap between research and market-ready ventures, and helping informal businesses join the formal economy.

4. Infrastructure and Smart City Development
Designing connected mobility, a real-time digital twin of the city, energy-efficient buildings, and public spaces accessible to everyone, including elderly residents, persons with disabilities, and hillside communities.

5. Resilience and Disaster Risk Reduction
Preparing Baguio for floods, landslides, earthquakes, and extreme heat through barangay-level risk assessments, resilient infrastructure, nature-based solutions, neighborhood early-warning systems, seismic retrofitting, and urban cooling.

6. Good Governance and Institutional Growth
Strengthening participatory, citizen-driven policymaking, digitalizing government services, deepening regional cooperation across BLISTT (Baguio, La Trinidad, Itogon, Sablan, Tuba, Tublay), and supporting the Cordillera region’s path toward autonomy.