It all started when…

This time, she employed the help of her husband, Patrick, who had experience designing fun learning for children. Together they designed a "zero waste" lesson that was scientific, hands-on, aligned to math standards, and gave students the ability to take immediate action to help the environment. The theme for that first lesson was "Change is Simple".  Student enthusiasm and pictures from that day spread through the school community which attracted requests for Lauren and Patrick to do more with more students.

"We found ourselves spending much of our free time brainstorming new workshop ideas. In that first year we came up with several units that we still run to this day; waste reduction, home energy, composting, and water conservation. Soon we had my father-in-law cutting PVC poles in his garage to help us build wind turbine kits. Our 1-bedroom apartment was filling up with workshop materials and we were using all of our time off from our ‘real jobs’ to visit schools."

— Lauren Belmonte

In 2011, two college students approached Lauren and Patrick looking to help after seeing photos from school visits on Facebook. Suddenly they were able to reach double the students with these "Change is Simple" themed workshops. 

"The students loved the workshops, I could see the light bulbs going off for kids, they were starting to see how their world worked, and how they could help. We could see how important it was to keep running these "Change is Simple" themed lessons somehow for students. I was all in at that point. We bought a non-profit law book, read it cover to cover, took online courses on fundraising, curriculum development, grant writing, and in April of 2011 filed Change is Simple for 501c3 status."

— Patrick Belmonte 

Lauren and Patrick were determined to design a program that fit public schools so all students could participate.

"We wanted it to be accessible for everyone because we are all on this incredible planet together, we can only preserve it and our existence on it if every person is educated on how to help.”

— Lauren Belmonte

This has remained one of the most important aspects of the mission of Change is Simple. Our program is delivered to students in public schools, right in their classrooms at no cost to students or families. This is how we reach ALL of the students in a community. 

In 2013 Beverly and Woburn Public Schools were the first districts to implement CiS across all of their schools. Since then, Change is Simple has been growing our team and the number of students we are able to educate each year due to incredible support from donors and foundations. Founders Lauren and Patrick volunteered their time as Directors of the organization until 2016 when funding for CiS allowed them to leave their full time jobs and officially become a part of the "staff". 

Lauren and Patrick remain committed to the mission and with the help of their passionate team, board members, college students and partner schools they have built a program that serves the needs of students, schools, and our planet. CiS has worked at 65 schools throughout the Greater Boston Area, served 40,000 students (8,000 annually), and continues to expand the number of schools that can access the program. Change is Simple is working on scaling the mission and use their 12 years of experience to build professional development training programs and create an online learning resource for schools that can be utilized by schools throughout the country.