Makewaves & DigitalMe join City & Guilds

Learning driven by young people’s interests and passions has always been at the heart of Makewaves. About five years ago we made a significant decision, to explore how Open Badges could be used to recognise the achievements of young people on Makewaves.

In Open Badges we saw a new approach to credentialise learning that was flexible, robust and connected enough to deal with the opportunities of learning in a digital world.

Vitally for us the Open Badge standard is underpinned by the Mozilla Foundation, an organisation with a reputation for protecting personal data and the trust of educators and individuals worldwide.

Along with our sister company DigitalMe, we began to build tools that helped schools and organisations create and award their own badges. Educators responded by creating thousands of badges and awarding tens of thousands to learners worldwide.

A young person, wherever they are in the world, can now explore a diverse library of badges, directed by their own interests and start to build skills that will one day unlock further opportunities for them.

Two years ago we launched the first mobile app to make evidencing and sharing badges more immediate and convenient. This year we launched OpenBadgeAcademy.com, a new platform, focused on building badge pathways into further education, employment and professional development. This new approach to capturing skills digitally across age groups was recognised earlier this year by winning the BETT innovation award.

This period of innovation has been exciting and has shown the potential that badges have to develop lifelong learning. It also became clear that with support we could have a far greater impact for learners. So it’s exciting to announce that from today both Makewaves and DigitalMe will become members of the City & Guilds Group. An organisation with a serious history in helping individuals recognise all types of skills in over 80 countries around the world.

We now have more resources and expertise to draw on to support our communities in developing digital credentials that make a difference for learners whatever their passion is.