Achievement Badges

Badge systems are a well-documented mechanism for sustaining volunteer engagement by providing short-term motivational checkpoints alongside longer-term goals. For peer mentor organizations, where volunteer churn is a significant operational risk, a visible progression system creates additional reasons to keep logging activities consistently. NHF and HLF both referenced the desire for status recognition mechanics, and badges directly address this by making achievements concrete and visible. From a data perspective, badge unlock events also serve as lightweight engagement signals that organizations can monitor to identify at-risk or highly engaged volunteers, informing coordinator outreach and support strategies.

The backend requires an achievements table and a user_achievements join table to track which badges each user has earned and when. Badge evaluation logic should run as a server-side event triggered after each activity save, course enrollment completion, or certification award - avoiding expensive full-table scans. Badge criteria should be defined in a configuration-driven manner (JSON or database rows) so new badges can be added without code deployments. The Flutter Badges Screen should differentiate earned badges (full color, unlock date) from locked badges (greyed out, unlock criteria visible). Push notifications should be sent upon badge unlock using the existing push notification infrastructure. All badge icons must meet WCAG contrast requirements and include descriptive alt text for screen reader compatibility.