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

One of the most compelling examples of this phenomenon is the Colombian cacao sector. There are approximately 38,000 cacao farmers in Colombia, and of these farmers 90% are smallholders and 73% live below the poverty line. This is mainly due to a lack of access to markets and fair prices, investment, capacity building, insurance, technology and an inadequate governance and policy framework.

In addition, artificially depressed prices for premium “fino de aroma” cacao put producers under pressure to revert to the production of cocaine in order to survive. Strong demand for cocaine bolsters the illegal armed groups which destabilize Latin American societies by undermining the authority of governments and the rule of law, and eroding transparency and the trust of citizens.

Following the 2016 peace agreement that ended a war lasting over 50 years with the FARC (Colombia’s largest guerrilla group), the Colombian government has identified over 100,000 hectares of coca plantations in post-conflict regions. To date, 77,000 families have voluntarily agreed to remove their coca plants. However, participation of the private sector is crucial to mobilize capital and provide the education and tools necessary for a farmer’s success in sustainably replacing their coca crop without suffering financial ruin.

Starting in Colombia, Choco4Peace is focused on empowering smallholders, particularly women, youth and indigenous people willing to transition from the production of cocaine to the cultivation of specialty “fino de aroma” cacao. This is accomplished by using smart-contract Blockchain technology to create a Decentralized Inclusive Economic Network (DIEN). This network aggregates cacao producers with stakeholders from the cacao industry, giving cacao entrepreneurs access to markets and fair prices, investment, capacity building, insurance, technology. Within this platform, the presence of transparency and traceability mitigates risk, mobilizes investments, and builds trust among members.

By promoting the growth of cacao, Choco4Peace not only diminishes the production of cocaine, but works toward solving the critical cacao supply deficit of 1 million tons per year (by 2020) while striving to meet six of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) from the United Nations.

UN Women and Innovation Norway, the Norwegian Government’s instrument for innovation and development of enterprises, are partnering to accelerate the achievement of gender equality and women’s empowerment through innovative technology solutions. UN Women’s Deputy Executive Director, Yannick Glemarec, and Innovation Norway’s CEO, Anita Krohn Traaset, signed the first Memorandum of Understanding between the two organizations on March 7, 2017 at a high-level event in Trondheim, Norway, where the guests of honour included the Crown princess Mette Marit and Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Børge Brende.

By the current rate of progress, the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 will not be possible, and women and girls in humanitarian crises impacted contexts are at most risk of being left behind. For example, maternal mortality in humanitarian crises and in fragile settings is 1.9 times the world average, and the number of maternal deaths in these countries represent 61 per cent of the total number of maternal deaths worldwide.

Innovation and technology provide unprecedented opportunities to reach those who are the farthest and hardest to reach by breaking isolation and creating economies of scale to accelerate the achievement of gender equality and women’s empowerment.

By working together, UN Women and Innovation Norway will enhance innovative approaches and solutions in response to addressing gender inequality issues, particularly in humanitarian contexts. The collaboration will also help to identify future public-private partnerships and strengthen the private sector’s engagement in generating innovations.

“During our stay here in Norway we have visited incubators and met with Norwegian entrepreneurs that develop innovative humanitarian solutions that can strengthen women’s empowerment. UN Women believes that this agreement is the beginning of a close partnership that will enable us to build stronger ties between the needs that we identify in our work and the innovative products that are being developed,” said Mr. Glemarec.

The partnership between UN Women and Innovation Norway will create platforms and projects, which will include exploring making blockchain technology work for women and girls. Blockchain technology offers users the ability to build and maintain immutable and secure personal records and to directly transfer digital assets without the need for intermediaries and associated costs. Thus, women and girls in crises will be able to have safe records of documents that are essential to rebuilding their lives and for economic activities. UN Women will participate in a hackathon at the Katapult Future Fest taking place in Norway in May to explore the potential of blockchain as a solution to some of the problems that women face in humanitarian contexts.

“This agreement makes the Norwegian private sector and innovation a bigger part of the solution”, said Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Børge Brende.

Broadly, the collaboration between UN Women and Innovation Norway will focus on:

• Enhancing innovative approaches and solutions to address gender inequality issues;
• Promoting women, especially marginalized groups, as both producers and consumers of innovations;
• Promoting public-private partnerships and strengthening the private sector’s engagement in innovations to accelerate gender equality and women’s empowerment, notably through competency building and knowledge sharing;
• Sharing best practices, methodologies, and lessons learned around innovations to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment;
• Promoting the Sustainable Development Goals.

UN Women believes that strong partnerships such as this, can help women and girls to design, shape and benefit from the technological transformations and innovations changing our world.  (Source: unwomen.org)

Pilot 

UN Women, in partnership with the UN Office of Information and Communications Technology (UN OICT) and with the support of Innovation Norway, hosted a four-day simulation lab to explore cutting-edge solutions based on blockchain technologies that address challenges faced by women and girls in humanitarian settings.

“Being the only UN agency created in the 21^st century, UN Women has prioritized innovation technology as one of the drivers for change, strategically leveraging innovation and partnership to accelerate progress towards gender equality and women’s empowerment,” said Yannick Glemarec, UN Women Deputy Executive Director, during the opening session.

Natural disasters and conflicts exacerbate pre-existing gender inequalities and discriminations experienced by women and girls, heightening their vulnerability, and exposing them to disproportionately high levels of risk. At the same time, women also play a critical role in enabling effective, efficient and sustainable humanitarian response.

UN Women, together with partners, such as Innovation Norway, is committed to ensuring that humanitarian action responds to the needs and challenges of women and girls and leverages their active participation and leadership. While there has been some progress in this area, there remain significant gaps. Calling for “radical innovation,” Elisabeth Fosseli Olsen, Head of Humanitarian Innovation Initiatives, Programmes and Grants at Innovation Norway reminded participants, “there are too many people left behind in today’s humanitarian efforts.” Harnessing technologies such as blockchain is one of many ways that UN Women is working to strengthen humanitarian action.

Blockchain is a distributed database of immutable digital records that can be accessed from anywhere. It offers users the ability to build and maintain immutable and secure records and to directly transfer digital assets without the need for intermediaries and associated costs.

These attributes enable blockchain to be used to create and store verifiable digital identity for refugees as well as enable trackable and inexpensive cash transfers. As humanitarian crisis continues to be protracted over decades, with millions of people on the move, technology like blockchain can provide solutions to immediate and long-term challenges.

During the four-day event at the UN Women Headquarters in New York, seven blockchain technology solution-providers demonstrated their solutions to over 200 UN officials, representatives from Permanent Missions to the UN, blockchain technologists, humanitarian actors and academics.

Among the various areas of potential innovation and investment, UN Women has identified cash transfer and identity as areas to leverage blockchain technology to assist women and girls. UN Women will invite selected vendors to submit a ‘request for proposal’, after which the most suitable solutions will be piloted in humanitarian crisis settings. Supported by Innovation Norway, UN Women is committed to ensuring that this process continues to progress in close collaboration with UN and private sector partners.

“History shows that trends can be broken with innovation in policy, institutions, management models, finance, science and technology. Making innovation work for women is a key objective of UN Women,” said Mr. Glemarec. “Digital technologies can provide unprecedented solutions to address the fundamental needs of marginalized groups and those at the bottom of the pyramid.”

(Source: unwomen.org)

Everyone can study the subject of their choice and receive a basic income that allows them to study in peace. Men and women have learned to communicate in a non-violent way and they are lucid about their needs. Technology is at the service of the weak, play and joy fill the streets of the cities.

To participate in the development of this society, associations with a vision and a project need a strong and fair currency. This is why Ventureo promotes cooperation between organizations, multiplies the strengths of everyone by providing a platform that provides visibility, services, advice and means of action.

Joining the Ventureo network will bring you new and more effective tools to fulfill your missions and will put you in contact with other organizations whose work is complementary to yours so that everyone can help each other and overcome the difficulties faced by the poorest.

If you are an entreprener or a non profit you can get 100,000 Ventureo to develop your project. It is an unconditional basic income for organizations.