Six modules on citizenship, in two languages, on a platform they own

They wrote to us, and we were not the only ones

One of the largest international NGOs runs a citizenship and civic participation programme for young people in Pakistan. The curriculum existed. The trainers existed. What did not exist was a way to deliver it to people who were not in the room.

They sent us a query. We came back with a plan and our pricing inside it. They were speaking to other providers at the same time and they chose ours.

That is worth stating because of what it rules out. This did not start with a relationship, an introduction or a favour. It started with a written question and a proposal that had to answer it better than the alternatives on the table.

They were not replacing something that had stopped working. They were trying to reach an audience classroom training was never going to reach, spread across a country, most of them nowhere near a city where a workshop happens.

The hard part was the language, not the content

Civic education in Pakistan cannot be an English-only product. Not if the point is young people rather than young people who studied in English.

So the whole thing is bilingual. Not an English course with a translated copy filed next to it. The same six modules, working in English and in Urdu, with voiceover in both, so that a young person in Multan and a young person in Karachi are doing the same programme rather than one of them doing a reading test.

This is the decision the programme turns on. Everything else follows from it.

Six modules, and what is actually in them

Six e-modules on active citizenship, built around experiential learning rather than a lecture with a quiz at the end.

What a citizen is, in practice rather than in a constitution. Rights, and the responsibilities that come attached to them. How democracy works when you are inside it rather than reading about it. The structures that govern, and where a person actually sits in relation to them. And volunteering, which is where the whole programme is trying to get to.

Youth leadership runs through all six rather than sitting in one of them.

Then they asked us to build a complete learning portal

Integrated with the Prime Minister's Youth Programme portal, so it would open inside the place their young people already go. They did not want to rent a platform. They wanted one built.

A development organisation is funded by project. Committing to a per person fee across a headcount nobody can predict two years out is not a budgeting problem, it is a reason not to start. So instead of putting them on a subscription, we built the whole learning portal and handed them the keys.

They own it. The running cost is hosting and a database, fixed, the same whether a hundred young people are on it or ten thousand. There is no meter.

And that is where it runs today

The portal is not sitting on our servers with their logo across the top. It runs on the official website of the Prime Minister's Youth Programme, which is where the young people it was built for already are.

So there is no separate address to send anybody to, and no campaign needed to get them to it. The training lives where the programme lives.

What it does now

A young person signs in through the portal they already use. No second login, no second password, nothing new to remember. One journey rather than two systems bolted together.

A certificate is not released until the learner has completed the feedback survey at the end of the module. That was their design decision and it is a good one. It means the programme gets told what worked while the person still remembers, rather than never.

And the administration is built for people whose job is not administering a platform. Learners are handled in groups rather than one at a time, because the person running this has a programme to run.

What we would tell someone in the same position

An English-only course is a decision about who is included

Bilingual costs more at the build. It is the difference between a programme that reached people and a programme that reached the people who were already comfortable.

Ask whether you should be renting a platform at all

Per person pricing suits an organisation with a stable headcount and a recurring budget. If yours is project funded and the number of learners moves with the funding, a system you own with a fixed running cost removes the objection rather than arguing with it.

Make the platform sign in through the door people already use

Every extra login is a place to lose somebody. If your learners already live inside another portal, the training should open inside it.

Ask who is going to administer it once it is live

The person running a programme like this has a programme to run. If every learner has to be added, moved and chased one at a time, the platform becomes somebody's second job. Ask to see the admin screen before you ask to see the learner screen.