Totara LMS powers world’s first humanitarian relief academy
Totara Learning is delighted to announce that Totara LMS is powering Kaya – the one-stop digital humanitarian learning platform – hosted by the Humanitarian Leadership Academy.
The Humanitarian Leadership Academy will enable local people around the world to prepare for disasters and emergencies in their own countries. They will train the next generation of humanitarian leaders and responders especially those located in vulnerable countries and communities. Kaya will be the main learning tool and will be accessed by over 40 countries.
The Academy is funded and supported by a wide range of organisations including UK Government, Norwegian Government, philanthropists and the corporate sector.
Totara Partner Catalyst is responsible for creating Kaya, the large-scale learning platform, and has adapted the award-winning open source LMS with several innovative customisations to optimise it for humanitarian workers globally. These include an offline player, enabling users to download and complete learning in areas of poor connectivity and access to learning through Catalyst’s global content delivery network (CDN), which ensures the LMS and its content is easily accessible from anywhere in the world.
Joey Murison, Business Development Manager at Catalyst-IT, said: “The Kaya platform has been delivered in record time for our partners at the Academy thanks to the significant benefits presented in the use of free and open source software, enabling bespoke humanitarian developments provided by Catalyst’s previous NGO and humanitarian sector customers to be leveraged.”
Lars Hyland, Chief Commercial Officer at Totara Learning, said: "At Totara we are seeing increasing adoption amongst high profile NGOs, charities and public sector organisations who require both the flexibility and cost effectiveness our learning management platform offers. It’s exciting and hugely satisfying to see our open source software supporting organisations that perform such important work across the world."
As well as the Kaya platform, the Humanitarian Leadership Academy also comprises a series of Academy Centres, which act as centres of networks to allow humanitarians to build relationships and partnerships with organisations through workshops and training activities. By 2020, they aim to have ten training centres around the world offering classroom and virtual training for surrounding regions.
Kat Sandford, Digital Planning Manager for the Humanitarian Leadership Academy said: “We have been able to use the Totara LMS and develop it to fit our objectives. One of the key things was the responsive design, being able to be on brand as well as user friendly. We now have a product that suits us and will grow as the Academy grows too.”
Humanitarian Leadership Academy’s Kaya is available in English, French and Arabic, and can be accessed at kayaconnect.org. The full case study can be found on the Totara Learning website, and you can read more on the Guardian website.