There is a version of this story told through software milestones. It includes release dates, deployment numbers, licensing decisions, and cloud migrations. It's an important story, and one worth telling.

But the real story of Primero begins somewhere else entirely: with a group of developers boarding planes and traveling thousands of miles to sit with social workers, case managers, and humanitarian staff trying to protect children under some of the world's most difficult circumstances.

More than a decade later, that same commitment to listening first still shapes a platform now used by organizations serving vulnerable populations across the world, from refugee camps in East Africa to community health programs and workforce development initiatives in North America.

It started with a question

In late 2013, UNICEF partnered with a small technology company called Quoin to build what would become CPIMS+, the foundation of today's Primero platform. For Quoin's six-person development team, led by Pavel Nabutovsky, the assignment seemed straightforward: build a digital case management system to support humanitarian work.

But before writing too much code, they asked a simple question: "What do the people doing this work actually need?"

The answer wasn't waiting in a specifications document. It was in the field.

Working closely with UNICEF's Robert MacTavish and other humanitarian stakeholders, Quoin's team spent 2014 and 2015 traveling to places such as Kakuma in Kenya, Amman in Jordan, and other field locations where child protection professionals managed complex cases every day.

The experience fundamentally changed the way the platform would be built. "We had to go out into the field and talk to the people who would be using Primero in their daily jobs," recalls Pavel Nabutovsky, now Platform Director at Salus. "We designed for their needs. The app had to be unobtrusive and helpful so they could focus on what mattered most: serving children and families."

That decision, to build alongside practitioners rather than for them, became Primero's defining principle.

Photo 1 - Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya: Mike presents an early version of Primero to case management practitioners, gathering feedback directly from frontline users. Engagement with field teams shaped the platform's usability and operational effectiveness in humanitarian settings.

Building technology that adapts to people

Over years of implementation, one pattern became impossible to ignore. No two organizations worked exactly alike. A child protection agency, a domestic violence service provider, a workforce development program, and a community health organization might all manage cases, but their workflows, priorities, and service models are fundamentally different.

Many software systems force organizations to adapt to the technology. Primero was built to do the opposite. "No two implementations were ever alike," says Nabutovsky. "A domestic violence program doesn't work the same way as a workforce development agency, and neither should their software. We built Primero to be highly configurable so organizations can support their own workflows instead of changing how they serve people."

Jack Miszencin, now Salus's Implementation Director, has seen the impact of this approach across dozens of implementations. "Every successful deployment begins with understanding how each organization delivers services," he explains. "Our implementation process is built around each client's programs, workflows, and goals so the technology supports their mission, not the other way around." That philosophy would ultimately prove to be one of Primero's greatest strengths.

A platform first developed to support child protection systems in humanitarian settings could later serve organizations focused on workforce development, maternal health, refugee integration, housing stability, and reentry services, without requiring them to abandon the approaches that made their programs effective.

Photo 2 - Indonesia: Jack Miszencin collaborates with national case management teams during a country-wide Primero rollout, supporting system configuration, workflow alignment, and implementation planning.

The same people, a new chapter

By 2023, Primero had grown into a mature global platform with years of field experience behind it. That same year, Salus was founded to bring a full-service SaaS implementation of Primero to mission-driven organizations.

What makes this transition remarkable is that it was not a handoff, it was a continuation. The core members of Quoin's original Primero team, including Pavel Nabutovsky, Jack Miszencin, Josh Toliver, Meaghan Riether, and others, moved to Salus, carrying with them more than a decade of technical expertise, implementation experience, and trusted relationships.

The people who had built Primero from the beginning simply continued the journey under a new banner. "Working with UNICEF allowed us to rethink how mission-driven organizations acquire technology," says Salus CEO J. Bradford Kain. "Instead of forcing organizations to adapt their programs to a generic CRM, we built a platform designed around the way human services are actually delivered."

The partnership deepened even further in 2024, when UNICEF and Salus established a formal contributions-in-kind partnership. Under the agreement, Salus assumed stewardship responsibilities for Primero as a Digital Public Good while continuing to contribute code, infrastructure, and technical expertise back to the open-source platform. Since then, Salus has invested more than US $500,000 in contributions supporting the platform's ongoing development and sustainability.

Photo 4 - The Salus case management platform, built on Primero, provides configurable workflows that enable organizations across sectors to manage services, coordinate care, and support vulnerable populations while maintaining strong privacy and security standards.

A responsibility that never changed

Underneath the configurability and the deployment stories sits something less visible but more foundational: the responsibility of handling information about people in vulnerable circumstances. "From the beginning, we understood the responsibility of handling information about vulnerable people," Pavel Nabutovsky said. "We had a duty of care. Security, privacy, and responsible data handling weren't features we added later, they were foundational requirements from day one."

That principle has traveled with the platform into its newest chapter, carried by the same team and grounded in the same UNICEF partnership that made Salus its steward. Working with clients across the US and Canada, including Blumont International, Humaniti International, Pacific Birth Collective, Grace Home, and Freedom Fighting Missionaries, Salus has extended Primero's community into returning-refugee support, workforce development, prenatal and postnatal care, residential maternity, and services for justice-involved citizens. Primero remains at the core of the Salus case management SaaS product, now integrated with other digital public goods such as RapidPro, which supports mobile intake and case updates for both beneficiaries and caseworkers.

Photo 4: Pavel Nabutovsky works with a partner organization to adapt the Salus platform to local workflows and program requirements. This collaborative implementation approach ensures technology supports existing service models rather than forcing organizations to change their practices.

What Never Changed

What connects a mission trip to Kakuma in 2014 to a residential maternity program in North America a decade later is not a piece of software. It is the people behind it.

From the earliest field visits to today's deployments, Pavel Nabutovsky, Jack Miszencin, and the colleagues who first built Primero at Quoin and now continue that work at Salus have shared a simple approach: listen first, understand the realities of frontline work, and build technology that strengthens services rather than reshapes them.

That commitment has carried Primero across countries, sectors, and contexts. What began as a solution for child protection caseworkers has evolved into a platform supporting organizations working in areas as diverse as gender-based violence prevention, refugee assistance, workforce development, maternal health, and community services. The settings may have changed, but the guiding principle has remained remarkably consistent: technology should adapt to the people serving vulnerable communities, not the other way around.

Quoin built Primero. Today, through its ongoing partnership with UNICEF, Salus continues to expand, maintain, and strengthen it as a Digital Public Good. Over more than a decade, organizations, use cases, and technologies have evolved. Yet one idea has remained constant: the best systems are built by staying close to the people who use them and the communities they serve.