Case Study

Global training course certificates

Frank Water Institute uses BlockMark Registry to issue blockchain-secured water resource management training certificates.

About Frank Water
Frank Water is a UK-based global water charity and social enterprise working towards a water-secure future for everyone, everywhere. Since being founded, Frank Water has combined grassroots water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programmes with systems-level work on water governance, climate resilience and collective water stewardship, with active projects across India, Nepal, Kenya and the UK. Alongside its charitable programmes, Frank Water also runs a social enterprise selling glass-bottled spring water and refill services, with 100% of profits reinvested into its mission of enabling access to clean, safe and sustainable water.

About The Frank Water Institute
Recognising that lasting water security depends on more than infrastructure alone, Frank Water established the Frank Water Institute — a dedicated platform for translating two decades of field experience into training, advisory services and knowledge sharing for water professionals, governments, NGOs and businesses.

The Institute’s inaugural programme, the Certificate in Applied Water Resource Management, was launched in 2026 as a free-to-access course designed to remove cost barriers for water professionals worldwide. Delivered by leading hydrogeologists, engineers and climate specialists from organisations including ACWADAM, Arup and Plan International, the course moves beyond theory, grounding every module in real basin case studies, field-tested aquifer science, and practical planning frameworks that water professionals can apply directly to projects on the ground.

The Challenge
With trainees spread across multiple continents and a strong emphasis on credibility and trust, Frank Water needed a way to issue verifiable, professional digital certificates to its first cohort of graduates — and to do so at a scale and standard that would hold up wherever in the world its trainees were based.

Working with Sachin Tiwari, Technical Director in India, Frank Water’s first cohort of the Certificate in Applied Water Resource Management spanned countries including Mozambique, Kenya and India. This international, distributed cohort presented a specific challenge: how to issue credentials that trainees and their employers could trust completely, in regions where document fraud and credential forgery are recognised as persistent risks. A PDF certificate alone would not offer the level of assurance Frank Water wanted for its graduates — professionals often relying on these credentials to demonstrate skills to employers, funders and government bodies.

Frank Water needed a certification solution that was simple to issue at scale, easy for recipients and third parties to verify instantly, and backed by tamper-evident, independently verifiable proof — without adding administrative burden to the Institute’s small team.

The Solution
Frank Water partnered with BlockMark Technologies to issue digital certificates through BlockMark Registry, our certificate issuance and verification platform. Using BlockMark Registry, the Frank Water Institute quickly issued over 180 digital certificates to its first cohort of trainees, each one instantly verifiable online and shareable by graduates on professional networks such as LinkedIn.

TTo meet the specific security and anti-fraud needs of a global, multi-country cohort, Frank Water made use of BlockMark’s blockchain notarisation on the Polygon network. Every certificate issued is anchored with a cryptographic record on-chain, giving graduates and the organisations that rely on their credentials an independent, tamper-proof way to confirm a certificate’s authenticity — without needing to trust a single central authority. This proved particularly valuable for trainees and employers in regions such as Mozambique, Kenya and India, where robust, independently verifiable proof of credentials helps counter the risk of forged or altered paper certificates.

Results

180+ digital certificates issued to the first cohort of the Certificate in Applied Water Resource Management
Trainees verified and issued credentials across multiple countries, including Mozambique, Kenya and India
Every certificate notarised on the Polygon blockchain, giving graduates independently verifiable, tamper-evident proof of achievement
Instant online verification for employers, funders and partner organisations, reducing reliance on manual credential checks
A scalable certification process that supports the Institute’s growing pipeline of future cohorts, without adding administrative overhead

Looking Ahead
With its first cohort successfully certified, the Frank Water Institute is now preparing for its second round of the Certificate in Applied Water Resource Management, continuing to expand its free training offering to water professionals worldwide. BlockMark Registry provides a certification foundation that can scale with the Institute as it grows — supporting future cohorts, additional course offerings, and an expanding global community of verified water resource professionals.

“Our trainees are working in places where trust in documentation really matters, so we needed certificates that could stand up to scrutiny anywhere in the world. With BlockMark Registry and the notarisation on Polygon, our graduates in Mozambique, Kenya, India and beyond can prove their achievement instantly and securely, and that gives them — and the organisations they work for — real confidence in the credential.”
Jon Shepherd, Co-CEO and Head of Projects at Frank Water, and Director of The Frank Water Institute