British Gas came with a contained brief: build a site to showcase 12 learning programmes in Word document format for teachers to download and use in class.

A round of user research made us aware of how difficult is for overworked teachers to adopt new initiatives, and how difficult it would be to convince them to change their curriculum solely on trust.

With this in mind, we decided that, rather than putting the onus of the programme on teachers, the platform needed to engage the students and the whole school, with tasks completable online by students themselves, and then evaluated by teachers.

We also realise the programme would benefit from an incentive system compelling enough for schools to actively participate, measure their progress, and make the value of the results tangible for the whole community.

They needed a new programme entirely: one that was easy for teachers to introduce, student-led in execution, school-wide in its rewards, community-wide in its impact, and highly advertisable for British Gas.

More than 3,000 schools enrolled in the first month. The incentive structure—leaves earned per completed programme, aggregated at school level, exchangeable for environmentally-friendly products donated to the whole school—gave schools a concrete, visible reason to participate and to keep participating.

A proposal that started as a 12-document download site became a nationwide UK schools and community programme. British Gas approved a budget 10x the original, plus a second budget for an online video game. Over 3,000 schools enrolled in the first month. The programme ran for 2 to 3 years, delivering environmentally-friendly products to thousands of schools across the UK.

3,000+ schools in month one · 10x original budget approved · 2 programmes greenlit · 2–3 years of nationwide delivery