How freemium models support life-changing learning: Introducing YouthhubAfrica

As part of our mission to democratize learning, we quickly learned that the biggest challenge many organizations face is cost. Traditional learning platforms can cost upwards of ,000 per year – not including additional features like authoring, analytics, or translation tools. This often means that most learning platforms are only accessible to teams with sizable budgets. And that didn’t sit right with us.

That’s why we felt passionately that EdApp needed to be completely free – forever – for teams of any size to use. No trial period. No restrictions on features that would make it impossible to use. No limits on lessons deployed, lessons taken, or the number of users. Organizations can access EdApp’s unlimited course authoring, our entire editable content library, mobile app, full analytics suite, and live chat support – all for free. This decision has since led to millions of lesson completions for teams around the world – regardless of budget.

What is a ‘freemium’ model?

In the SaaS world, this is commonly referred to as a ‘freemium’ model, where users can access a product without payment. Only those who require more advanced features need to dip into their wallets. 

Since EdApp was acquired by Safetyculture last year, Safetyculture CEO Luke Annear and I often discuss the impact of what freemium really means. For us, it’s not just a customer acquisition model. It means that teams are able to get real value from products, like SafetyCulture and EdApp, where they otherwise may not have been able to afford to. And being able to do it all from their mobile devices – the most widely available technologies in the world with 66.85 percent of the world’s population owning one. By removing the upfront costs of investing in a platform and technology to support it, we believe that freemium is more than just a model – it’s how we’re helping make education possible around the world.

How freemium allows YouthhubAfrica to fight against female genital mutilation across the continent

This really hit home for me when one of our customer success team members discovered YouthhubAfrica, a frontline youth advocacy organization based in Nigeria, which is using EdApp to empower youth across the continent in their fight against female genital mutilation (FGM). In less than a week, YouthhubAfrica successfully created and launched the life-saving training in English and French to over 1,375+ users in 11 countries, with 68 percent of users actively taking the course.

As a partner of the United Nations, the organization has also brought young people across Africa together as part of a social change movement to fight the inequality they face. These inequalities largely stemming from a lack of quality education, sexual reproductive healthcare, and essential skills and opportunities.

When we had reached out to the team at YouthhubAfrica to learn more about the success of their FGM program, Emmanuel Augustine from YouthhubAfrica, said: 

“Our mission is to empower young people with the knowledge and skills to harness their potential and take center stage for Africa’s development. We selected EdApp as our learning platform to easily create and deploy human rights content across Africa. We’ve sent our lessons to over 1350 individuals in a matter of days and, since our content can be accessed via smartphone, it means that more learners can connect and complete our extensive lessons on the African Youth End Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) course. In an effort to End FGM, we have partnered with the African Youth Commission with support from the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme on the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation. We believe that empowering and educating our youth is an amazing way to do accomplish this and we look forward to what we can accomplish with EdApp’s scalability and accessibility.”

Join our #EducateAll initiative

It fills us all at EdApp and SafetyCulture with an amazing sense of purpose and satisfaction that our humble platforms can be used to drive great global change, such as critical human rights issues.

That’s why we partnered with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) to bring free, high-quality, impactful education to millions of people around the world – particularly those with limited opportunities. Adult education remains one of the biggest global problems, with fewer than 5 percent of individuals aged 15+ participating in education in learning programs in almost one-third of countries. #EducateAll aims to change this.

To get involved and share your learning material or training, join our #EducateAll initiative today!