Engaging youth to solve global grand challenges

Client: Education Global Practice, World Bank Group
Location: Global
Year: 2020-2025
Focus: Experiential learning, digital platform development, global challenges education

Designing a scalable, story-based learning platform for youth engagement in global challenges

Evoke is an open learning initiative launched by the World Bank to equip young people around the world with the skills, mindset, and agency to tackle the world’s most urgent challenges. Drawing on game-based learning and narrative design, the platform invites learners to take on real-world missions across topics such as climate resilience, entrepreneurship, education, and innovation. From 2020 to 2025, Education Futures LLC led the strategic and technical development of the platform, supporting a multi-year effort to redesign and expand Evoke as a Moodle-based environment for experiential, challenge-driven learning.

Approach

The project began by adapting the original Evoke framework—a World Bank-supported social innovation game first launched in 2010—into a modern digital learning platform capable of supporting global implementation. Built on Moodle, the platform was developed to support asynchronous, story-based learning that encouraged learners to apply concepts through real-world challenges and collaborative action.

The development team, guided by Dr. John Moravec, restructured the user experience to allow for multi-course deployment, multilingual access, and integration of multimedia storytelling elements. Features included interactive missions, peer feedback tools, role-based access for facilitators, and data tracking to support both learner reflection and impact assessment. The platform was designed to operate in low-bandwidth settings and included options for offline participation through printable materials and asynchronous assignments.

Across the platform’s iterations, Evoke served as both a standalone learning program and a testbed for broader innovations in digital pedagogy within the Bank’s EdTech strategy. Lessons from Evoke directly informed the development of the Education Policy Academy and other Moodle-based capacity-building programs.

Deliverables

• Technical architecture and UX redesign of the Evoke platform, hosted on Moodle
• Integration of interactive storytelling, multimedia missions, and gamified progress tracking
• Development of multilingual course templates for use in Africa, Latin America, and South Asia
• Implementation roadmap, technical documentation, and sprint-level development oversight
• Learning analytics features to support user engagement and program evaluation
• Cross-program integration pathways linking Evoke to broader World Bank digital learning initiatives

Impact

Evoke became a model for how open-source technologies and story-driven design can be used to promote agency, critical thinking, and real-world engagement among youth. By guiding the platform’s development from concept to global rollout, the project helped establish Evoke as a flexible tool for blended and digital learning in diverse cultural and infrastructural contexts. It also demonstrated how public institutions can lead with creativity and relevance in designing learning systems that respond to the challenges of the 21st century.