Project Harmony is on a mission. As a child advocacy center (CAC), the organization’s goal is to be the national leader in educating professionals and communities about child abuse and neglect – supporting a coordinated, comprehensive, and child-friendly response to victims and their caregivers.

Training is a key component of Project Harmony’s mission, according to Nicole Paul, Senior Director of Prevention & Early Intervention at Project Harmony, “if people are educated, they know how to spot abuse or neglect, and how to react.”

With LearnUpon, Project Harmony has built a single training solution that can be accessed with ease by anyone, anywhere.

The challenge: Mission critical training limited by geography and resources

Training has been a core strategy at Project Harmony since 1996. The team trains professionals working directly with children, like social workers and nurses, and those in the community that have child-facing occupations, like teachers and administrators.

Conducted in-person, their instructor-led training was well-received, but had its limitations. “Our training was well respected, but we couldn’t reach an audience much further than regionally”, Nicole explains.

On top of the geographical restrictions, in-person training was manual – manual tracking, manual evaluations, and manual certification. It was an inefficient, time-consuming process.

To successfully achieve its mission, Project Harmony’s team members knew it was time for a change. By investing in a learning management system, they could break down geographic boundaries and enable everyone, no matter where they are, to train in a flexible, easily accessible, and scalable way.

However, with non-dedicated IT resources and a history of less than stellar experiences with other learning platforms, it was important that the team carefully invested in the right solution.

The Solution: Easy-to-use, easy-to-access training – no technical expertise needed

For Project Harmony’s team members, LearnUpon’s LMS was the number one solution to fit their needs. An out-of-the-box platform with best-in-class support, the team could trust that they didn’t have to devote IT resources throughout implementation and beyond.

A user-friendly experience for all

LearnUpon’s admin-friendly experience meant the training team could handle much of the set-up by themselves – no technical expertise required.

And there are benefits for the end-user too, Nicole describes how “the registration process is much simpler, because it’s all totally self-serve. When training is completed, people can go in and see the training they have done – they don’t need us to do that.” Ease-of-use and a seamless experience for the end-user was the team’s top priority.

Far-reaching, easily accessed training

Through LearnUpon, Project Harmony trains between 12,000 and 15,000 attendees per year, with high-impact programs that “provide information on how people can handle situations with the children and caregivers better, while preventing their own trauma and burnout.” says Laura VanEpps, eLearning Specialist at Project Harmony.

Because of the team’s previous negative LMS experience, Nicole explains, “success for our training meant discoverability and ease of registration for our end-users, and this is reflected in the number of our attendees.”

Offering an asynchronous experience, the team designs programs with a mixture of content types, like video, to complement the virtual ILT. This dynamic training experience makes their training discoverable to anybody with an internet connection, supporting training nationwide.

With the expanded reach of their training, the team can see where their end-users are, using this information to make informed decisions on future conferences and in-person events.

Up Next: A hub for all audiences

Working with the LearnUpon team, Project Harmony have rolled out training in phases.

The Project Harmony team plans to roll out training for employees through LearnUpon, educating their people on the organization’s mission and values, its partner companies, and delivering essential HIPAA compliance training.

And the team wants to continue to build on their blended and asynchronous learning offering, including microlearning and gamification for employees, and offering more post learning to complement the live training – building in a more comprehensive experience.