Internacional de la Educación América Latina (IEAL/OLPE) — Bringing Two Education Platforms Together in One Mobile Experience
A cross-platform mobile companion for Education International’s Latin American digital ecosystem
Client Overview
Education International (EI) is the voice of teachers and education support personnel worldwide. Representing more than thirty-two million trade union members across roughly four hundred affiliated organizations in one hundred and seventy countries and territories, EI is the largest and most representative global sectoral federation of education unions.
EI campaigns for publicly funded, quality education accessible to every student regardless of background, and works to combat xenophobia, racism, and discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, and socio-economic or ethnic status. It also supports the growth of independent, democratic teachers’ organizations and collaborates with other global union federations to advance solidarity across the education sector.
For this engagement, EI’s Latin American arm operates two closely linked digital properties — Internacional de la Educación (IEAL) and Observatorio Latinoamericano de Políticas Educativas (OLPE) — through which it publishes news, policy analysis, campaign updates, and regional publications.
Objective
EI wanted to extend the reach of both IEAL and OLPE beyond the desktop web by giving its regional audience teachers, union members, policy analysts, and affiliated organizations across Latin America direct mobile access to news, campaigns, and publications. The goal was a single, unified mobile application that mirrored the full functionality of both websites and consumed their existing APIs, without requiring a separate app or duplicated content pipeline for each property.
The Challenge
The brief presented a few interconnected challenges that shaped the technical approach:
- Two distinct websites, each with its own navigation structure, campaign pages, and content types, had to live inside one coherent mobile experience.
- The content — regional news, campaign updates, policy analyses, country profiles, and multimedia resources — needed to stay organized and easy to browse on a small screen without losing the depth available on the web.
- The app had to reach members across many countries on both iOS and Android, which meant development speed and long-term maintainability were as important as the initial build.
- Existing backend services and APIs needed to be reused rather than rebuilt, keeping the mobile app in sync with the same content EI’s editorial team already manages.
Our Solution
Cyblance built a single React Native application for both Android and iOS, allowing one codebase to serve two platforms a decision that shortened development time and reduced the long-term cost of maintaining parallel native apps. The app connects to EI’s existing web services and MySQL-backed PHP APIs, so content published through the websites flows into the mobile experience without any duplicate data entry.
Landing Experience
On opening the app, the user is presented with the names of both websites and chooses which one to explore. This keeps the two properties clearly separated while allowing quick switching later without leaving the app.
Internacional de la Educación (IEAL)
Selecting IEAL opens its home page, where the user can browse articles in descending date order or search by keyword. A hamburger menu opens the main navigation, and each main menu item expands into a submenu leading to its respective pages. Within IEAL, the app organizes content into the following sections:
- News — activities, regional meetings, campaigns, and affiliated events.
- Red de Trabajadoras de la Educación — a campaign section that expands into “Qué es la RED?”, “Actualidad”, and “Eventos afiliadas”.
- Movimiento Pedagógico Latinoamericano — a second campaign section with its own “Qué es la MPL?”, “Actualidad”, and “Eventos afiliadas” pages.
- Sobre IEAL — background pages covering “Qué es la IE y la IEAL”, “Comité Regional”, “Ejes de Trabajo”, “Oficina Regional”, and “Organizaciones Afiliadas”.
- Centro de Recursos — a resource library with “Publicaciones IEAL”, “Publicaciones de afiliadas”, “Declaraciones”, “Denuncias”, “Videos”, and “Fotografías”.
From the bottom of the main menu, the user can switch straight over to the second website without restarting the app.
Observatorio Latinoamericano de Políticas Educativas (OLPE)
OLPE mirrors the same navigational logic as IEAL while surfacing its own content types through five main sections: Noticias, Educar No Lucrar, Análisis, Lector de Noticias, and Sobre OLPE.
- Análisis — analysis reports and country profiles, browsable by selecting a country’s flag, giving users a quick visual way to drill into region-specific policy content.
- Lector de Noticias — a dedicated news reader where articles can be filtered by tags and by country.
- Sobre OLPE — a CMS-driven page describing the organization, including a contact form for users to submit their details directly from the app.
Key Features at a Glance
| Feature | What it delivers |
|---|---|
| Dual-site architecture | One app, two independent content sites (IEAL and OLPE), switchable from a single main menu. |
| Search & chronological feed | Articles sorted by date with keyword search for fast content discovery. |
| Nested campaign menus | Multi-level navigation for campaigns like RED and MPL, each with its own sub-pages. |
| Country-flag analysis browser | Visual, flag-based navigation to country-specific policy analyses on OLPE. |
| Tag & country filters | Lector de Noticias lets users filter news by topic tags and by country. |
| Resource library | Centro de Recursos consolidates publications, declarations, complaints, videos, and photos in one place. |
| Native contact form | Sobre OLPE includes an in-app form so users can reach the organization directly. |
| Shared API layer | Both platforms consume the same existing PHP/MySQL web services, keeping content in sync with the websites. |
How the Approach Holds Up Against Today’s Mobile Trends
The core decisions made on this project a single cross-platform codebase, API-driven content, and modular navigation line up well with where mission-driven and membership-based organizations are taking their mobile strategy today:
Results
Cyblance delivered a single React Native application that successfully unified two previously separate web properties — IEAL and OLPE into one coherent mobile experience for iOS and Android.
- A shared codebase across both platforms reduced development effort and cost compared to building separate native apps.
- Members and affiliates gained mobile access to the full breadth of existing web content news, campaigns, analyses, and resources without EI’s editorial team needing a separate content workflow.
- The nested, campaign-based navigation preserved the structure and depth of the original websites while remaining usable on a mobile screen.
- By connecting directly to EI’s existing PHP and MySQL services, the app stayed content-consistent with the websites from day one, with no duplicate data entry required.
Conclusion
This project shows how a well-scoped React Native build can bring two distinct, content-rich websites into a single, easy-to-navigate mobile app without asking an organization to rebuild its backend or split its editorial process in two. For Education International, that meant its Latin American network of teachers, unions, and affiliates gained a direct, mobile-first channel to the news, campaigns, and policy work that connects them.
At Cyblance, this reflects the kind of cross-platform, API-first mobile development we bring to mission-driven and membership organizations building apps that respect existing content investments while opening up new, accessible ways for communities to stay engaged wherever they are.
