“How to get certified:
Complete at least one objective from each mission, and all 10 quests. You’ll receive official recognition: World Bank Institute Certified Social Innovator — Class of 2010

How to get top honors:
Complete two objectives from each mission, and all 10 quests. You’ll be certified with heroic honors.

Complete all three objectives from each mission, and all 10 quests. You’ll be certified with legendary honors.”

And this is what we got:
“The World Bank Institute awards this certificate to Sarah Shaw Tatoun for having participated in “EVOKE- a crash course in saving the world.”

Does this really sound to anyone like a reasonable approximation of what we were promised?

I, for one, would certainly not have participated on the level I did, if I had expected this.

I am very disappointed. Throughout the first season of Evoke I encouraged people to forgive the many glitches, failures of communication, and changes in mid-stream that we experienced. I thought the difficulties only to be expected in what seemed, despite reports to the contrary, to be a poorly funded, low-priority effort by people whose attention was fully occupied elsewhere. But, I reminded others, certification as a social innovator was an achievement worth putting up with some aggravation for.

If it is standard WBI policy NOT to give such certification, fine. The solution is simply not to represent the certificates as such. No foul, no harm.

As things stand, I see no reason to return to either Evoke or any other programs offered by the WBI, nor will I encourage anyone else to do so.

– Sarah Shaw Tatoun

The certificates took longer than expected to issue due to internal discussion on some of these issues you highlight. As background, we had a number of discussions on the wording of these certificates. This final wording is the official certificate language that WBI uses for all of its learning programs. Moreover, the look is what WBI has determined will be its look for all learning programs. In the end, it was not possible to alter the look or wording of the certificate.

We also discussed the issue of electronic distribution quite extensively. As few agents were willing to give out physical addresses, we lobbied quite a bit to distribute these certificates electronically. All certificates bear the signature of the WBI vice-president.

We realize that this solution is not optimal for all participants, however this is the outcome that we reached to enable distribution of the official WBI certificate to as many agents as possible.

Hope this helps clarify this process.

Thanks again for your incredible participation during EVOKE.