We believe data, leveraged in a way that empowers both organisations and end-users, is the key to addressing these major challenges. Access to transparent and trusted data offers organisations the capability of transforming how services are delivered. Decision making becomes data-led. For end-users, they gain control over secured, personal data; the basis for greater agency in everyday transactions.

Utilising innovative technologies, including blockchain, artificial intelligence and machine learning, AID:Tech has developed and deployed proven solutions for governments, corporates and NGOs. Blockchain becomes the key to securely and transparently capturing data. And, AID:Tech’s proprietary technology enables advances in the management and dissemination of data. In time, artificial intelligence and machine learning will play key roles in making data available in ways that benefit and empower organisations and users.

AID:Tech was the first company in the world to successfully deliver international aid to Syrian Refugees in Lebanon using Blockchain technology. Our products and services help clients and partners address some of the world’s largest social issues as well as targets set by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals – signed on by over 190 countries. Our solutions offer an unprecedented level of insight into performance, transparency, and efficiency – generating rich datasets with which, governments, NGOs and charities can harness to improve how funds, products and assets are distributed and tracked.

AID:Tech CEO & Co-founder, Joseph Thompson, has been recognised as one of only ten global SDG Pioneers by the UN for his work in promoting Blockchain technology and its potential in global development.

Build on Celo
Celo is a platform that is open and open-source, allowing for an ecosystem of powerful applications built on top, including easier cash transfer programs, peer-to-peer lending, collaborative small-scale insurance, and other digital assets and wallets.

Earn with Celo
Celo increases access by enabling anyone with even a simple Android smartphone to participate and earn Celo for decentralized verifications.

Mobile-First Platform
To create a truly inclusive financial system, we started by building an infrastructure to serve those excluded from the current system. Celo’s protocol includes unique features that create a seamless user experience on mobile phones.

A year after its groundbreaking pilot, Oxfam in Vanuatu, together with 17 local and international partners, is scaling its blockchain-based UnBlocked Cash project to distribute cash and voucher assistance to over 35,000 beneficiaries affected by the Category 5 Cyclone Harold and COVID-19.

UnBlocked Cash is now serving as a single payment platform to unite partners in the harmonized delivery of cash assistance, enhancing coordination, collective capacity, and ensuring more value for each donor dollar by boosting the local economy. Oxfam is deploying this solution in Papua New Guinea later this year and in the Solomon Islands in 2021, with the Pacific region leading other pilot locations across Oxfam’s global confederation.

Oxfam’s UnBlocked Cash project, powered by Australian fintech Sempo, is set to tackle the growing humanitarian demands by saving costs of distributing aid by up to 75%, reducing delivery times by over 90%, and bringing more transparency and accountability in the process.

All of this is possible thanks to a blend of humanitarian assistance, digital financial inclusion, and locally-led blockchain innovation. The UnBlocked Cash solution consists of the e-voucher “tap-and-pay” cards used by beneficiaries, a smartphone app through which vendors receive the payments, and an online platform where NGOs like Oxfam can monitor transactions remotely and in real-time.

The innovative use of digital currency, in this case, a digitized version of the local currency in the form of a collateralized blockchain token, has introduced the concept of digital financial inclusion and access to Vanuatu, where the majority of the population are unable to access ‘brick and mortar’ banking services. In other iterations of the initiative, the use of stable digital currencies (stablecoins) as a “borderless” digital store of value has also introduced the potential for the institutional donors to fund, and track funds across multi-country programs, with just a single contribution and access to a central analytics dashboard. The platform also has the potential to flexibly integrate direct cash distribution and individual donations, allowing for a more transparent, direct, and participatory model for humanitarian assistance globally.

Earlier this year, Oxfam won a €1M prize from the European Commission to support the development of this humanitarian innovation beyond the Pacific region.

Vanuatu Pilot 2019

“During the UnBlocked Cash pilot, Oxfam in partnership with Sempo and ConsenSys distributed 966,443 Vanuatu Vatu (VUV) or
11,896.91 Australian Dollars (AUD) to 187 heads of households and 29 vendors, which was estimated to have directly benefited some 1,209 individuals in two urban communities in one of the world’s most at-risk countries.

Over the course of a month, Oxfam and its partners were able to successfully deliver a first-of-its-kind Distributed Ledger
Technology (DLT) based solution employing the Dai (DAI) stablecoin. Additionally, the system piloted in Vanuatu saw the successful deployment of a novel near-field communication (NFC) card, which in tandem with a ‘side-channel’ developed by Sempo, allowed the system to cope with poor internet connectivity while ensuring double-spends were impossible despite offline transactions.

Oxfam set out to determine whether DLTs can reduce the cost and transaction time of cash and voucher assistance (CVA), while improving transparency, security, and overall user experience (UX) within the urban context of Port Vila, Republic of Vanuatu.

With the support of Sempo, the UnBlocked Cash pilot has shown modest cost-savings and significant time-savings related to
operational activities. Onboarding recipients to the platform was reduced to an average of 3.6 minutes per individual compared to over an hour during the Ambae volcano response in 2018. Additionally, the tested system eliminated slow identity (ID) verifications and reduced dependency on post offices or banks to deposit cheques.

The quality of the tested solution, which encompassed transparency, security, and user experience indicators, was found to be
extremely high. Recipient and vendor feedback alike indicates an overwhelming preference for assistance of this type.

Additionally company structures are often too rigid for very early stage businesses, and were not designed for this fast paced, collaborative world. We provide the flexibility and liquidity needed to build teams, raise capital and get products to market faster.

Audacity provides highly flexible legal structures for early stage ideas. These structures make it easy to bootstrap ideas online. It can be used for any project type whether startup or creative.

Although the platform is intuitive and easy to use, we have a sophisticated backend technology which can leverage equity liquidity to help projects fund as they build.

One of the means that funding is achieved by tapping into an existing $700M DeFi (decentralised finance) ecosystem, obfuscating complexity away from the user, while providing all the regulatory safeguards and user protection needed.

We’re providing an API which allows investments from both traditional and DeFi sources. Our platform has no fiddly tokens, and it is fast, providing the same user experience as a web based platform.

Once projects have reached a level of maturity, they exit the platform to a become a registered Delaware C-Corp, Delaware LLC or a UK limited company.

Trust and governance structures are provided by Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).

Audacity can be used for creative projects also, we want to encourage creative projects who can output to an IP Assignment document for sharing royalties.

Start building on Audacity today audacity.id

BCF aims to transform philanthropy by developing the world’s first decentralized charity foundation to build a future where blockchain technology can be used to end all forms of poverty and inequality, advance sustainable development and ensure that no one is left behind.

The three focus areas are:

1. Working with global leaders and industry pioneers to steer the future of charitable and philanthropic blockchain-enabled standards and regulations.
2. Building Blockchain embedded platform development that advances methods of collection and redistribution of wealth for more direct, scalable, and accessible, promoting deeper and broader participation for giving, receiving, and doing.
3. Creating blockchain-empowered social programs for direct impact on the bottom billion: building community resilience and industrial development with scalable blockchain solutions.

The term “cash transfer programming” describes all the various mechanisms of cash transfers, including cash-for-work and vouchers, used to implement programs. While cash transfer is a methodology used to achieve program goals – not a program aim itself – the term “cash transfer programming” has been widely adopted as the overall description for any use of these mechanisms in field programs.

Since the advent of Bitcoin in 2008, social innovators have striven to leverage cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies to develop faster, cheaper remittances, new solutions in micro-finance, and a whole host of CTP solutions. However, there is little unity across the social sector to scale these solutions in real experiments and best determine which can affect the most positive change.

The Bifröst Initiative, initially developed by ConsenSys Social Impact, MakerDao, and Dether, is a nonprofit consortium of blockchain companies and NGOs seeking to affect positive change in the evolution of cash transfer programming by using cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. The initiative works across blockchain ecosystems and is always open to partnership and grant inquiries.

What happens when your ‘play-money’ becomes a treasure chest, and you’re past the satiety point of money? I decided to donate the majority of my cryptocurrency to charities around the world, with an open application process and funding charities big and small. I focused on causes I believe in, or causes I know will work from my experiences. Timed with the 2017 crypto bubble, 5104 BTC was turned into $55 million for charities. I’m happy and proud of the impact that will come, mostly thanks to the amazing charities and the dedicated people behind them.