Open Conversations: Building Public Goods to Expand Human Freedom (Chris Szymczak)
Funding the Commons Open Conversations · 4:11
A UNICEF innovation office lead explains why the agency works with open source and digital public goods, and what it hopes for from a partnership with the Funding the Commons community. Szymczak says country offices work with governments, such as education ministries, so curricula can enter national systems and teach young people that technology can be built in the open. He says UNICEF is still at the beginning of its exploration of blockchain, crypto, quadratic funding and DAOs, and urges any community to involve young people in its work.
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From Funding the Commons Open Conversations, hosted by Funding the Commons.
Transcript
[Music] my name is Chris shinchuk I work for Unicef unicef's office of innovation where I lead the digital public goods my main interests and intersections are International Development technology and youth and how open source technology can support unicef's goals so first of all it's worth remembering that unit f is everywhere what does that mean UNICEF has more offices across the planet than any country has embassies and consulates we are everywhere UNICEF basically always
works with the local government and for the governments so in each country office UNICEF would have an education section a health section A Child Protection section so when it comes to education these Specialists and the given setting they work directly with the Ministry of Education in a given country and so we're very close to the policy makers and that allows us to make sure that um this curricula that we're trying to develop are part of the national Educational Systems the goal there is really to bring generational change and really strengthen the system and the capacity of young people with
the open source and digital public goods and technology in general we're trying to make sure that uh young people know that technology can be developed in various ways it's super important they need to know that technology can be developed in ways that are closed but also the technology can be built in the open I'm I'm super excited about unicef's uh relationship with the funding the com and we see eye to ey when it comes to values and and the things that we believe in we see ey to ey thinking about technology in a positive way that technology actually can do something for
good and this is not such an obvious thing these days when Tech gets so much bad rep and for for good reasons right so that was the beginning and we're trying to build something really substantial uh between the community that funding the commons has already built around the events the conference say the hackathons and UNICEF with uh our access to young people and with our access to the most difficult problems in the world let me assure you UNICEF Community knows very very little about the community that funding the commons is in we are still at the beginning of our road in terms of blockchain in terms of
crypto in terms of quadratic funding in terms of dows but we're really exploring this this space and so to arrive here in Tokyo and see an event that has so many government officials involved so many City officials involved is really uplifting and this is one of the most important things to open up these work streams to open up these lines of conversation because again this is a space where a crowd and funding and intent come together and digital public goods need funding so funding the comments is a perfect place for Unicef to be I have one message uh to anyone
who works in any Community involve young people in your work ask yourself ask them are there young people on your team that are part of whatever you do and I bet you it's a small percentage involve young people in whatever you do [Music]