ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS.
MAKE THEM COUNT.
Citizens profiles showcase extracurricular activity, personal development and extended projects against globally recognised benchmarks for skills, character and social impact.
“The visual nature of the profile is so appealing”
“So much better than a CV or list of exam results”
“It’s so satisfying to see my wheel fill out over time”
We measure what we value.
Exams dominate education, failing to recognize the diverse talents and full potential of all students.
Education needs more focus on skills, character and service. This starts with meaningful recognition.
Digital portfolios are not enough. We need credible benchmarks that give students real-world impact.
Schools should be celebrated for efforts they are already making, showcasing their unique ethos and value.
Stunning portfolios mapped to EXPERT global benchmarks.
Grades only tell half the story - of your students and your school. With Citizens you can give your students visually stunning portfolios mapped to globally recognised benchmarks for skills, character and social impact. Use Citizens to track and showcase
Skills
Extended projects & coursework
Extracurricular achievements
Community service
Personal development
Youth awards…and much more!
Recognised curricula and frameworks
…and many more!
The Citizens Benchmarks ™
Benchmark your students and your school
to expert frameworks for youth development.
Citizens Skills 360 ™
All activity on Citizens is automatically mapped to appropriate skills and character attributes in a globally-recognised benchmark.
Research-backed: founded from research at UCL’s Institute of Education on youth skills, character and social contribution.
Employer-ready: mapped to Future Skills frameworks from bodies such as World Economic Forum, McKinsey and Microsoft.
Codesigned with students and schools: codesigned with students and schools globally as part of a grant funded by Innovate UK, the UK government’s innovation agency. Continuously updated by feedback from Citizens Character-Developing Schools.
UN Impact 360
All activity on Citizens is automatically mapped to social impact in the globally-recognised UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Global: the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, also known as the ‘Global Goals’ and the ‘UNSDGs’ are a set of 17 commitments for a better world made by 193 world leaders.
Big challenges need big action: the scale of our challenges can seem daunting, even impossible, but the UNSDGs give us a workable blueprint to tackle them.
Even the smallest act can make the biggest difference: every citizen can play a role in addressing the goals, and every act counts.
How does it work?
Just 3 easy steps to start building your skills CV.
Every act counts.
Get recognition for things you’re already doing. At Citizens we believe that every act counts - whether it’s listening to a podcast on leadership, playing a sport, or one of a hundred other acts from volunteering to internships, small and large and everything in between.
FAQs
Citizens is a youth development and recognition platform seeking to expand what we value in education. We help students and schools showcase personal development, extracurricular achievements and social contribution in digital portfolios mapped to expert benchmarks.
Citizens is free to students and always will be. Schools subscribe for admin and showcase features. Please request a quote here.
Subscribing schools can set 'visibility ceilings' for their students, which prevents either actions or profiles being public until students reach a certain age, or graduate. We also have advanced settings that allow students to share specific actions only with their assigned teachers, or even with other students in their school.
For individual students that use our app without a school subscription, we set minimum ages for profile and action visibility based on local guidance in your country. This is usually 15 years old.
The Citizens Benchmarks are designed to map student action to recognised frameworks for skills, character and social contribution.
The Citizens Skills 360™ is based on our founder's PhD research at UCL’s Institute of Education on Global Citizenship Education and youth development, and has been refined thanks to a codesign and piloting project with students and schools funded by Innovate UK, the UK government’s innovation agency. You can read more about this research in our forthcoming Founding White Paper.
The UN Impact 360 is a visual framework for the UN Sustainable Development Goals: 17 commitments for a better world, made by 193 world leaders… our best blueprint for collective action as global citizens.
If you are below the age of 15 you must have parental or guardian consent to use Citizens.
Your school must become a subscribing member of Citizens, demonstrating your commitment to character development and recognition, and evidencing this in our index. Accredited schools become part of a global coalition of like-minded institutions and gain access to resources, recognition, and a platform to showcase their impact. Please book a call with our team if you would like to hear more.
It is! We looked at a lot of ideas for our logo, from globes to civic symbols, but none of them really clicked. Then, our founder’s daughter suggested a unicorn — and we instantly loved it! There’s a serendipity in this choice. Unicorns are often seen as representations of uniqueness, inner strength, and untapped potential. Celebrating this in every citizen is what we’re all about, and our little unicorn gives us a reminder of this every day!
No, and we can work with you to integrate Citizens with either, depending on how you plan to embed Citizens in your cocurricular programmes.
For schools that go beyond exams and celebrate a whole-child approach. For students that want to take control of their own development.
We take a data export from your LMS and use this to build student profiles in Citizens, preloaded with their existing activity. We do this under a data processing agreement to ensure compliance with privacy requirements such as GDPR.
This can be done via LinkedIn's Featured section. First, you need to copy your unique URL for your profile, which can be accessed by clicking 'Share' under your name and photo on your main Citizens dashboard. Then, follow LinkedIn's guidance here to add this link to your profile as a Featured section, ensuring it is the first thing prospective employers view when they review your LinkedIn CV.
The Citizens Skills 360™ is based on our founder's PhD research at UCL’s Institute of Education on youth skills, character and social contribution, and is designed to be a comprehensive benchmark of those skills and attributes exams alone cannot recognise. It has been mapped to Future Skills frameworks from bodies such as World Economic Forum, McKinsey and Microsoft, and has been iterated on and adapted during a codesign project and pilot with students and schools globally. You can read more about the research behind the Citizens Skills 360™ in our forthcoming Founding White Paper.
The UNSDGs or 'Global Goals' are 17 'Sustainable Development Goals' from the United Nations. The goals are designed to address major challenges facing humanity, such as poverty, inequality, climate change, and peace. Adopted by all UN member states in 2015, they set targets for 2030, and are the best blueprint we have for collective action as global citizens.