For over 30 years, the PKG Center has been the hub for social impact at MIT.
Take your learning beyond the classroom into communities around the world through internships, fellowships, and social impact projects with nonprofits, government agencies, and social enterprises.
We provide education, mentoring, and often funding to help you leverage your technical expertise to build a better world.
Our programs are rigorous and immersive, yet designed to fit into a busy schedule, often over summer or IAP. Stop by our office (W20-549) or check out one of our upcoming events.
We work with all MIT students, from first-year undergraduates through late stage PhD, across all disciplines on issues that matter to you, including:
- Energy and Climate
- Public Health
- STEM Education Access
- Public Interest Technology
- And more
Our Mission
The PKG Center educates MIT students to address complex social and environmental challenges in collaboration with affected communities, empowering students to become agents of change for the betterment of humankind.
Our Values
RESPECT AND RECIPROCITY: Communities are not merely one-dimensional repositories of need or homes to problems to be solved. They are complex places full of assets, knowledge, networks, and capacity. We recognize that communities affected by social and environmental challenges have the foremost insight into their causes and consequences. Accordingly, social impact projects should be driven by community-identified priorities. They should be developed collaboratively and with humility, building the agency of both students and communities to effect change sustainably–while also recognizing the limitations inherent to project- or time-bound student interventions in the context of systemic problems.
RIGOR AND REFLECTION: Making a positive social impact begins with recognizing how the status quo conflicts with personal values. It requires reflecting on the systemic root causes of challenges and rigorously refining interventions based on research, experience, and the insights and priorities of affected communities. To that end, reflection on how one’s background and expertise shape perception is essential to ethical and effective community engagement, as is rigorously aligning values-based outcomes with the process used to achieve them.
PLURALISM: We embrace differences where we find them through respectful curiosity and careful listening. We recognize that people of all backgrounds and expertise bring important insights and assets to the mission of making a social impact, and that deeply held personal values can lead to different priorities and perspectives. The PKG Center is committed to teaching the tactics of values-aligned social change, not prescribing what that change should be.
