A Los Angeles-based non-profit organization developed the full-circle learning model over a decade, as a response to community need. The initial project was launched with collaborators in the period of social turmoil following the civil unrest of 1992 in Los Angeles. Using donated space, it started as a neighborhood after-school program. Eventually, the need for long-term organic change pointed to the need for a sustainable non-profit program and, eventually, for a curriculum that would help students develop a deeper sense of purpose for their lives and learning, as change agents and humanitarians within their own communities. A program developed based initially on instinctive strategies as well as honing and meshing research-based strategies. Gradually, Full-Circle Learning developed an integrated education model that has led to repeated success in terms of academic improvement and leadership skills and has given students role models and roadmaps for their evolving lives.

The concepts within the Full-Circle Learning model are research-based and time tested. The strategies support a peer culture and curriculum that connects a child's heart and mind. The original lesson plans are structured to be customized as teachers learn the elements of the lesson plan design. The training was designed with the idea that each community should adapt the learning plan to the community needs, education standards, human resources and cultural complexities of the school. Universal values that honor local traditions — this is the key to the model's success.

As others visited or heard about the pilot program and asked for help, the curriculum materials and workshop trainings have been made available to other selected sites. Now many towns, villages and cities have been exposed to Full-Circle Learning. Those who receive the training should be willing to serve as collaborative global learning partners to other classrooms around the world, to cement the bonds that made learning much more meaningful, starting in one neighborhood, in one city, where children captured a vision for the future — and for making someone else's future a little brighter.