The Role UNICEF Plays in Encouraging the “Impact Trinity”

foreign [Music] folks in addition to the mentors that you guys got us connected to was huge for us coming from a small country and getting that visibility and that access to Resource was very very important for us and for the twofold the second piece in addition to the technical assistance was also the mentorship on you know the business model and how we can make a a greater or a a stronger business model for the for us to sustain and then again back to the impact metrics because we're also a company really focused on impact and the impact mentorship was also very key for us to really understand like how do we position ourselves and how do we look at the impact metrics and how could we try to find follow-on impact uh investment so I think that was um very very um helpful for us and um you know the open source piece in the digital public good leg we were very new to that process and the UNICEF team literally held our hands to walk us through that path and and now we're a proud registered DPG solution so that has also been very very amazing for us so thank you great um yeah like there's a lot of mentorship that goes on I hope that there's also like support as well you know the mentorship is almost like the technical um you know guidance I suppose but I hope that there's there's some support because I want to kind of pivot over to my next question for emea which is really about some of the challenges that you face and like so you get technical mentorship but tell us a little bit about some of the challenges that you faced as you try to you know bring about this product for impact in the real world so there was a lot of challenges because especially when you connect the smart contracts to the real world is a totally different story if you are building um I don't know decentralized exchange or something like that it's like in a closed loop you're still in ethereum you are just communicating with other smart contracts even I don't know if it's a landing protocol exchange or whatever usually the data is like um that you need for those smart contracts on the blockchain but when you're building something like treasure you are coming you're connecting with uh you're interacting with uh the smart contracts interacting with real humans like uh they need to provide data um so one side is the technical limitations and some of the shortcomings of the blockchain technology that we have like civil attacks like um um many things that I mean the problem of oracles these things exist and for many of them there is no uh big solution so far even right now so that was one side of the challenges that we had the other side was actually like the challenges that you know are there when you want to introduce a high-tech solution to a community that didn't know about it local communities in rural areas and they don't need to know about it you don't you shouldn't force them to know about like blockchain and it's even better not to mention that they're using blockchain because it makes it complicated so many new questions so what we try to do on this side was to make it so easy for them to use the project so just to have a recap of the project we connect donors to local communities who do conservation work protect forests the protocol gives a proof of impact impact in the form of NFD to the donor and on the other side the money goes to the protocol and is managed in a similar way to an escrow system whenever they provide updates from the forest from the trees a portion of the money is unlocked and goes to their non-custodial value to wherever they are and um that's how Toyota Portugal works the version one of the protocol of course we are doing a lot of more things so to do this um I mean to get the rewards for conservation I mean um we try to make it um similar experience to their web 2 experience like like having a WhatsApp Instagram application on their mobile so we built an application um which has integrated some seed phraseless valid non-custodial wallets they don't have seed phrases they don't need to know about the complex nature of valids in blockchain so they use their email but it's not custodial we use web3odes for that at the same time we sponsor all their transactions on the supply side for local communities we use stable coins instead of um volatile assets like ethereum Bitcoin so they get their conservation rewards in Dai and many many other works like I many of them I forget but this was actually one of the most uh challenging parts of our job to make it like because it's actually important like we had to take one of the things that we learned is that um some of our early local communities that were using a buggy and both complicated profile left um actually the movement the project because it was too complicated for them and the more we try to make it better for them user friendly the easier um it was for them to stay in the project and of course with UNICEF we got a lot of mentorship like uh referring to the impact mentorship uh in the case of Teresa it's not only about planting trees because we onboard the local communities are who are less privileged who have less access to um actually the typical opportunities in climate Finance so it's about social impact as well that's why we actually have that kind of social impact project as well and the impact mentorships have helped us uh quantify measure those impacts so we learn uh what we're doing like um in a better way and of course the open source like this is one of the best things that you can get out of this um um investment because you think you're open source but you are not like a open source friendly project so lots of documentation contribution guidelines um many many things like I think it was awesome like that that part like now we feel confident about like being a good open source project even if the project fails the resources everything out there in a good ways for the future Builders to use yeah that's it great um lots of challenges um congratulations on getting through all those challenges and and really thanks very much for putting out such an amazing product of benefit for for everyone with the conservation that it supports um that kind of like something that benefits people all around the world even if it's done in local communities makes me think of equity which is one of you know the key lenses that UNICEF UNICEF is an equity-based organization everything we think about we use equity as a kind of a lens for that and and one of the ways that we think about digital products and how we make them Equitable is digital public goods which is my next next question for Just For You Jose um first of all sorry I should say congratulations to each of you for becoming a certified digital public good which is very impressive and challenging to to get done um but Jose would you tell us a little bit about next capits and your journey to becoming a certified DPG um how did UNICEF support you um in that process I mean I know it's somewhat through the mentorship but um what kind of benefit then like after you talk a little bit about the process what benefit do you see and I know armia mentioned a little bit some of the benefits of dpgs what benefits do you see from your perspective and even talk a little bit about maybe you know being a for-profit business with an open Digital public goods okay that's a whole question yeah so I will try to to wrap up everything or I will try not to forget part of it uh but the starting point for was uh thinking about building a digital public good that could achieve the sustainable goals from new and so from starting point I think that having onboard all of the support of Unicef Innovation fund had to do first of all about thinking on the impact thinking about the resources thinking about leaving something that could be scalable that could be secure that could be useful for some other products just to use so first of all I would say that becoming an open source project has to do with developing a layer in which other people could build so from that starting point UNICEF was amazing um and having the impact in in the main objectives of building a digital product has to do with uh first of all measuring it theory of change was one of the mentorships and it's amazing how you could measure your impact on a region and actually that's that's a profitable digital probably good a company that could create lasting and social economic impact and coming from Latin America that's a huge depth of the region so for us was easy to to like have that purpose but still difficult or challenging to build it in a way that could be useful for everybody so uh at last but not least I think that uh every project should be sustainable and should be um profitable in terms of creating value and creating value has much to do not only with revenue or incomes but having these things in mind if you could align your project so as to build it with values and having in front people that have needs and if you could fulfill those needs through through technological Solution that's great and just to mention some objectives of digital probably good we have no poverty gender equality quality education no poverty those are like huge North Stars to have and an invitation that should be done on every entrepreneur that it's building their Venture it's to to continue tackling those objectives uh it's a huge rock that we need to defeat it's not one or two companies who will make it come true it's and that this has to do with web3 too web3 with web3 it's a matter of community and this is so loud loud voice in and in an ecosystem as web3 that first of all makes me proud to be part of it makes me wanna collaborate with other projects that are tackling the same problems and joining forces I'm sure about that uh it will be more fulfillable than going just by my own so uh just uh in a rough sense I think that that's what uh left us to become a digital probably good it's great um and I I like that you brought out the aspect of community as well as soon as we're here at like Devcon and there's a very strong kind of feeling of community around the like the technology but also like the the problems that some people are are looking to solve and and for for us as UNICEF and for me like it's it's exciting and it's inspiring and energizing to get that feel of community and hopefully being able to like get people to come and join us in our in our journey and in our work but yeah that's that's that's great thank you very much um I think we'll maybe try and talk a little bit about so we've talked about the DPG process the process of um you know joining the Venture fund your your journey with the Venture fund um I'd like to talk a little bit more about real world now it's it was part of the uh the title so taking you've gone through you've joined the Venture fund you've accepted you've gone through mentored now maybe I'll ask roomie to tell us a little bit about um the opportunity for piloting the actual product that you gain with with UNICEF can you tell us a little bit about the the real application now that we've gone through the process so we are currently in the midst of uh piloting our solution Rahat with the country office the UNICEF country office in Nepal we are working on um uh with 1500 households for an unconditional cash transfer of about I think 150 000 through the country office and the Innovation fund and uh with that pilot um we are really looking at um building or bringing in or bringing in some learning insights about the impact of how a blockchain-powered solution can bring in efficiencies in the cash transfer project so um how for example real-time monitoring could help um the country office understand or understand how the cache is being transferred understand the flow of funds and get verifiable transactions so um so we're really looking at working not just with the country office like but along um site with the local authorities and the government bodies there so we're bringing them along for this particular pilot and getting them on boarded or getting them to understand the process and really as hermia had said like really not talking to them about what blockchain technology is but really getting them and showing them the benefit of how they can use a system like this and get it to the ones who need it the most efficiently like cost effectively and in a very um I think like an auditable way because with all of the financial reconciliation that happens in in these aspects that's a huge uh time and resource sucks so uh we're looking at how the time and resources can be saved through this particular pilot and um where we're trying to see if we can take all of the learnings from this particular pilot and replicate it hopefully replicate it in other country offices and globally so taking um Rahat from a local as almost like a local product from Nepal to sort of see how we can globally um amplify it so that's kind of where we're at with the pilot currently and um just as an example right now like you know if you're sort of bringing uh training the the local government bodies and how they can use the dashboard look at some real-time information on how the transactions are coming through and how the data is coming through and sort of see if they can detect anomalies and escalate it immediately and act upon it so um giving them or showing them the value of what some information like that could support them to make a greater impact great thank you and I'm actually really excited as you know I'm very excited about this pilot um I wonder can you have a little reflection on so you mentioned you know asides from your own company you mentioned two other entities you mentioned three actually you mentioned units have country office you mentioned the government and of course the beneficiaries can you maybe just speak a little bit about how uh The Innovation fund facilitated with the UNICEF country office the engagement with with the government because that's that can be difficult if you're if you don't have that like evidence as yet right um in Nepal all of the cash transfer that we do like we usually have to work with the government so there's definitely the piece of onboarding them to understand for them to understand and be open to it so again the the because again because crypto is illegal getting that or making them to understand the difference and that was definitely a little bit of a hurdle but with the rate um concept and the rate um understanding with the Innovation fund and the country office we were able to have a number of conversations with the local government and you know in such real world cases at times we're talking about emerging Tech and you know blockchain and then here you are where everything is like paper-based and um you know and the beneficiaries like they don't even have like they only have feature phones that they don't even have phones so just making that leap frogging to that is is very very difficult and and then getting even the local government to say okay this is a dashboard you can get in you can see all of the information so that definitely is a challenge but um we are having these conversations to bringing them along one at a time and the country office is definitely paying uh playing a huge role as being part of uh and joining us in the field as we have these conversations with the local government bodies and with the beneficiaries and really looking at some issues that are on the field where you know where the beneficiaries there's a struggle between okay who's going to get the cash in their like real world problems beyond the monitoring piece as well great thank you um that's great um I I'd actually love to talk more about about this particular topic and I really one thing I want to point out like cash-based transfers is a huge uh programmatic tool to basically get funds get currency get money directly to the beneficiaries which is a I've seen it in action and it's really hugely effective efficient and important and we heard someone speak a little bit about subtraction yesterday in um in the opening ceremonies and I feel I would love to speak more about it but I feel that cash-based transfers and using Technologies to really speed them up and facilitate them kind of speaks to that subtraction so thank you very much and thanks for the great work that you're doing um we have a few minutes left what I'd really like to do now actually or me if I can ask you to be the first one if you could take a couple of minutes to think about what kind of advice you would give to someone out here who's maybe in a startup situation and wants to become working in the impact area or even if you were talking to yourself you know 18 months in the past or two years in the past what kind of advice would you like to give to yourself are to our audience so I would say like one of the most important things that I mean impact projects in our impact Founders like us need to consider or the challenges that they face is the funding so you are not a typical startup that probably can make money from the early days or even if you can make money or attractions probably are not very similar to the some of the startups that VCS are very interested to like invest in so you have this problem [Music] I mean now it's easier because refi has become a trend in crypto and VCS are understanding it and but unfortunately you are now in a beer pocket so you will have hard time to raise uh some money compared to I don't know one year two year ago so you have a number of options based on our experience and the ex I mean the best practices that we had in Treasure so UNICEF is of course one of the places that you can go if you have an crazy impact idea and you think probably I mean a crazy impact idea but not very unrealistic you think it works like uh and you have some small Pilots because if you're in the process of application UNICEF doesn't accept only the ideas like there should be some metrics some tractions that proves that this idea um even if now it doesn't um I mean and it's not a charity I mean you need to make a sustainable project so all these together makes it challenging to actually get funding so UNICEF is one place the other place that you have is kidscoin which you can consider we raised um I would say almost equal to the uh I mean similar to the amount that we raised from UNICEF from git coin I think 85 or 90 000 in different rounds in climate rounds and um there are also of course the I mean the product your product should make money and if I mean we want to make it sustainable that's really important so all in all these helped us to keep treasure in a aligned uh um I mean capture aligned to our vision and now we feel much more uh comfortable to raise money from other VCS and we are doing it now and um that's what I think about I mean the challenges and things that you can do great thank you okay Jose from your experienced position now what advice would you like to impart on on early stage startups wanting to get in to kind of follow the great example that you guys have given I would say impact should be in the roadmap as the essential path um I would say that and I will just share a small meet that I had before we were selected and it was kind of the spirit of the program and we were like working with the work plan with the the plan that we were gonna present for the units of innovation fund and it was like too ambitious and we were asked if we wanted to to change that in order to be fulfillable so as to achieve it and our spirit was let's make the ambitious possible and that had to do with the spirit of what kept us not sleeping what kept us working through the whole journey um what I mean to say it's it's great to to have huge objectives in mind a huge purpose not only could help in your region it starts by helping you and your team we we never had uh such an amazing team such an aligned team since we we didn't add that purpose so clear so so so focus on reaching that so I strongly recommend if if that's possible uh for the ones who are trying to to follow that path of impact and and becoming uh a startup that could create some change in your region have a great dream afterwards have a great purpose share it with valuable people and count on the support of like UNICEF in this case that will make this harder at first because it's challenging but afterwards uh it start paying and will continue to pay Time After Time great that sounds like good advice uh Rumi you give me your advice in one minute please yes um I just wanted to get done um it just took Jose's point about they make it harder in the beginning because when we applied and we had done we had to do this full-fledged work plan and as soon as I submitted I just looked back at my team and I was like I'm not I don't know if we're getting this investment but I think we're set we have a whole road map and a plan and a purpose and a focus all set so I think that is key to have that process in tight and uh I think I completely agree with Jose about that can really set the stage and how the team work and the team is set to do that as well so I think that's definitely definitely very very helpful I think the one last thing that I would add is um I felt like for us the non-tech challenges have also been very very high and I think it's very important to design for you know like non-utopian conditions so we are looking at the real world problems and not just working in a bubble so I think that's very very important so I'll pause it that perfect thank you very much guys can I ask you for a round of applause for our three great companies and thank you so much for the great work now how can you guys how can you join us all the all the impact startups are out there I hope you've been inspired by hearing the great work from our three panelists here um please if you are in the same position that these guys were 18 months two years ago please if you have something that you think can help apply to the UNICEF Venture fund and you will be brought through that difficult but rewarding Journey um we're also looking for people to partner with us um and you could also um if you have spare time spare expertise you could join the um the mentoring process that we have for the next round of venture fund companies and finally the last 15 seconds I'll say if you have a little bit of spare eth or some spare money you can certainly contribute to our phone as well and you can be guaranteed that it will go towards um impactful projects like what we have up here on stage I have two seconds left so thank you very much everybody I hope you've enjoyed the panel if you have any questions for us please come up and be happy to speak to you outside or later thank you [Applause]