Update on the partnership between EF and UNICEF

Since 2019, we now have supported UNICEF’s CryptoFund with recurring contributions, and we’re enthusiastic about our most recent donation too. As we speak, I wish to share the story of our journey collectively, to acknowledge a number of the achievements of our partnership, and to talk a bit extra about what’s subsequent.

Why and the way we began

In a previous blog post, I defined how rising economies characterize an enormous alternative for Ethereum, and talked in regards to the significance of asking ourselves “who would most profit from Ethereum?”

Individuals dwelling in rising economies characterize billions of next-generation customers and builders of Ethereum. The subsequent query ought to then be: “how will we attain the following billion?”

The Ethereum mission began with a small group of individuals on a shared mission, and immediately the mission has attracted lots of of hundreds of like-minded builders and researchers. This like-mindedness was the ability that aligned the neighborhood, however we must always admit that it additionally created pure obstacles to entry for individuals who weren’t linked with somebody in the neighborhood. Due to this, I used to be all the time conscious that the Ethereum neighborhood was missing the true variety wanted to maximise the expertise’s actual potential, and to succeed in the following billion.

Across the finish of 2018, I used to be searching for alternatives to broaden our attain after I met Chris Fabian from UNICEF Ventures (who now leads the Giga project, which we additionally assist). To be trustworthy, forward of our first assembly, I had doubts about whether or not EF would work properly with a staff from the United Nations. I felt they had been a really conventional, large group with standard methods of doing issues. However Chris shared a few lists of objectives that they wished to realize utilizing blockchain expertise, and that blew my thoughts.

He and his staff understood the significance of public blockchains, in addition to the tradeoffs of assorted protocols. This was the second after I felt assured that there was a chance for each teams to have an impactful partnership. UNICEF has a community, and assets that we didn’t have, with ongoing work in additional than 190 nations, and collaboration with various stakeholders together with NGOs, companies, startups, and governments. They had been additionally on the lookout for new methods to alter from the within, and to embrace innovation. That is how our collaboration began, and from there we started to assist the UNICEF CryptoFund, which was announced and launched at Devcon 5 in October of 2019.

Chris Fabian and I at Devcon 5, which coincided with Halloween. The UNICEF Ventures staff spent a sleepless evening coordinating with the Headquarters for the launch of the CryptoFund.

UNICEF CryptoFund

It was pure for the EF to turn into the founding donor to the UNICEF CryptoFund given our collaboration. The CryptoFund is the primary car in the whole UN ecosystem – and presumably the general public sector at giant – to obtain, maintain, and use crypto, and it makes investments in assist of expertise startups inside growing nations which might be geared toward enhancing the lives of kids. These startups obtain tokens and use them with out changing to fiat currencies, inside the objective of growing open-source, digital public items. To this point, 2,527 ETH and eight BTC have been contributed, and 18 investments have been made.

On the identical time, the CryptoFund is making an attempt to sort out a key problem for organizations like UNICEF – certainly one of transparency and accountability. Historically, donors and different stakeholders don’t have entry to a real-time, tamper-proof view of how a charity spends its cash. Within the case of the CryptoFund, each transaction the CryptoFund makes is seen on its website with a corresponding hyperlink containing immutable transaction particulars on blockchain explorers.

Within the picture above, you possibly can see the EF’s most up-to-date donation – acquired first by UNICEF France after which transferred to the UNICEF Headquarters.

The CryptoFund web site is powered by Juniper, an open-source set of instruments developed by UNICEF Ventures to assist handle digital property. Any public sector group that desires to leverage tokens in a user-friendly, clear means, can experiment with Juniper immediately.

Most of the 18 startups which have acquired a CryptoFund funding use blockchain-based expertise of their merchandise as properly, and we’ll proceed to assist them by means of workshops, and by connecting them to great abilities and tasks within the Ethereum ecosystem. You may learn extra about these startups growing open-source, digital public items here.

I can not emphasize sufficient how influential this mission has been — not just for the humanitarian sector and governments, however even to the world. It has raised consciousness and let the general public see how it’s doable for a big, established and worldwide group to undertake public blockchains in environment friendly and clear methods. I’ve heard a lot constructive suggestions and really hope that different conventional organizations like UNICEF really feel extra assured making use of those public items too.

What’s subsequent?

Whereas we proceed our assist for the CryptoFund and its portfolio firms growing digital public items in rising economies, EF’s collaboration with UNICEF is evolving. By way of the brand new EF Fellowship Program, we’re supporting two thrilling developments. One EF Fellow – who represents a CryptoFund portfolio firm – is working with many nationwide and municipal governments in Latin America to make use of blockchain in digital identification and verifiable credentials. One other EF Fellow is exploring the intersection of web connectivity and blockchain, working with Giga, which is a joint initiative by UNICEF and the Worldwide Telecommunications Union (ITU) geared toward offering web to each faculty on the planet.

I’m excited to share extra about their work within the coming months and look ahead to increasing our attain to the following billion by means of our continued partnership with UNICEF. Within the meantime, you will discover them on Twitter: UNICEF Innovation (which manages the CryptoFund), UNICEF France (which was the primary nationwide committee to make use of crypto) , and Giga.

Lastly, I wish to ship my deepest appreciation to Sunita Grote, who leads the UNICEF Enterprise Fund, Christina Rose Lomazzo, UNICEF’s blockchain lead (in addition to Mehran Hydary, Cecilia Chapiro, and others who had been a part of the journey collectively), and to Chris Fabian, for pushing the needle collectively for these essential steps.