WWF ep2014

A screenshot of the WWF #ep2014 campaign platform. At the top of the page, it features a picture of multiple hands showing a thumbs-up gesture. Below that on the left half of the page, it shows the slogan "Show that you care about the environment!" and text that explains the campaign in more detail. On the right side, there's are call-to-action buttons to either "pledge" as a candidate or "support the pledge" as a citizen.

In 2014 the WWF launched its online campaign platform for the upcoming European Parliament elections to make candidates commit themselves to environmental protection. As a freelancer, I was humbled to build the platform from scratch in CakePHP.

As candidate, you were able to pledge by creating a public profile and choose what aspects of environmental protection you would prioritize in your own policy-making. As voter, you were able to see a list of all candidates and their profiles, but also invite candidates that haven't pledged yet via email or social media. The campaign was a huge success: Over 500+ (of 751) candidates from all over the EU signed up, helping to make the importance of environmental protection in European politics more visible.

One of the key challenges in this project was the internationalization of the platform which was translated into 9 different languages. We thought a lot about how to make it as accessible as possible for the WWF editorial staff. Instead of going with existing solutions, which didn't really work for this use-case, I built a new backend to manage the translations directly.

In addition, I was really happy to work on a project that reflected my personal views and to create a small positive impact with my work.