Philanthropy in the age of Web3 - Alvaro Cosi

Transcript

[Music] excellent there we go so I'm adapting to local Customs so I'm alo so I'm actually despite your name I'm actually from Geneva uh very like uh from Switzerland but uh um Spanish Republicans family fled to Venezuela that's actually my history comes from that as well of displacement and I work for the UN Refugee agency which is UN here I'm going to talk today about philanthropy in the age of web 3 uh for a very obvious reasons that you'll see afterwards um because of the context you probably heard a lot lately about

conflicts increasing also but only this morning already the we got this news uh that me it's not only in the US uh it's also happening in Switzerland so obviously the UNR are you guys familiar with UNR actually not really HR is an agency that is almost 75 years old uh in the beginning its only mission was uh to actually make sure that forcibly displaced people from World War II will get home safely after World War II that was the only mission for UNR the issue is that after World War II then you had the Korea War then you had like Vietnam War then you had other

conflicts at the end of the day and institution That was supposed to exist for only two three yeah three years ended up existing for 75 years uh so it's a celebration but nothing really to celebrate next year unfortunately and therefore the Mandate is given by the UN General Assembly it's more or less a way to externalize a service from countries or putting together some let's say resources um this means that as an organization they never were very used to fundraise because the budget came from States we give you a mission here's the funding but um obviously with this in mind and this um we quickly realize that uh State

funding is not going to be enough and now actually State funding is actually decreasing so what do we do so I'm here in Switzerland I work for organization called Switzerland for UNR which is look at it like a kind of a spin-off of UNR actually started my career within UNR at HQ and um what happen is that for us it's kind of a structure that allows us to test things to fundraise to also give tax certificate for example and um specifically into in the Swiss territory um my organization is called Switzerland for nhr but you also have UK for nhr you also have USA for INR you

also have in Germany for INR and in my case case it is about really looking into what's happening in Switzerland so what happens in Switzerland is apparently we're the number one like most Innovative country in the world for several years now so how do we connect what's happening in Switzerland with the needs from the organization so I know it's about philanthropy but it goes a little bit beyond this because obviously it's not only about fundraising and uh our Moto pretty much in our unit at least is to say uh we've got plenty of challenges and problems um so there's probably a solution or something already being developed out there we're not going to

be like the tech developers or the software developers or anything like that our job is to be humanitarians and uh so instead of creating all thing let's you know bring the pain points bring the challenges and let's see what's happening out there if there is something there so in terms of blockchain Switzerland has a huge role to play because of the legal framework we all hear for the same reason and our first attempt in in blockchain was this so that didn't work in terms of fundraising uh we tried to do too many things that was like three years ago we got lots of like attention in terms of media um we tried to really do this kind of Engagement piece with a actual Refugee from Syria uh in based located in Geneva

and we wanted to really add this this name and actually this story behind it it was about how do refugees see what it is to be a refugee and so it's a Syrian illustrator did this series in M we got as said a lot of like media attention but fundraising wise zero it was on polygon first attempt and we were like okay that that doesn't work but it works for not what we expected so immediately we say you know what maybe it's not about fundraising maybe one of our goal and objectives is also uh awareness raising so in terms of awareness raising we really contined that path through was a very interesting path for us because then we we did like super like we tried things and we did uh super like

interesting things like GE localize the cards Geographic cards mapping on location where unich is actually active we did a collection with Turf so that one is actually on cardano the other one was on polygon uh that was for Paris blockchain week then we did the typical profile picture to raise awareness engagement and what we discovered was super interesting for us and you you can imagine you talking about that un organization so very like a bit of like let's say risk averse in terms of perception risk averse also in terms of okay what what's this Tech new thing what you you talking about making goats out of this so what's the symbol of that so the the the cool thing about this was

really about talking to totally new audience that we never speak to and if you want to do awareness raising or advocacy work hey let's you better start talking to everyone not only usual people so that actually clicked we also went to Art basle very close from here I'm happy because everyone knows it here as well and we did some very cool stuff with arst on desos and uh last but not least we tried some different things as well like uh that's a AI generated uh images of what will the world look like without displacement without being a refugees and the images you see here at three countries but we took the 14 most

underfunded crisis in the world today I'll be like speaking showing you a few of the examples we've done and some of the things we're going to be doing afterwards but of course uh uh there there'll be time for questions I didn't mention that in the beginning but it's good one of the big areas of blockchain within UNR and in humanitarian order in general is what we call cash assistance so you always have like this this this idea of like really this humanitarian bringing like the bags of right and giving it to beneficiaries but that that doesn't exist anymore we quickly realized that actually by giving cash to populations to to to select populations it was actually working much better and

also in terms of dignity and also integration within the host Community was working a lot better so here's hold on [Music] spee

for for there we go so that was a little example

of a work we actually pioneering with which is cash assistance and we use stellar and in this particular case and usdc because stable coin obviously for obvious reason is a very important aspect of that and obviously what this allows us here you saw an example a Venezuelan displaced person in AR in Argentina but actually the first attempt the first pilot project was in Ukraine uh for simple reasons like Ukrainian refugees trying to flee the country uh you send them cash in their digital wallet but you don't know where they're actually going to cash it out is it in Poland for lotes is it in Europe you know in Germany in Europe yes you have a question what was the name of wall the the wallets it's a from Stellar I can I can give you all the it's not my

personal project but I can actually give you all the details afterwards um it's more on the finance and cash based intervention uh unit um that's the that's the whole process so it's really digital dollars issued by Circle via star Network becomes digital dollars and Via this alliance with mogram they can actually offramp it quite easily anywhere in zot is if you're in Poland in europeos in Germany or in Argentina peso so another big topic that a lot of people ask us in terms of blockchain and humanitarian action is digital identity um that's a kind of a we know it's where we're probably going to benefit a lot from blockchain as well however today

there is still a big debate on uh you know on rights property rights it's funny enough because in a decentralized system like this but also in terms of hacking because there are there been a lot of accidents with data protection and little by little it's taken a lot of time and I think that the main challenge is really about Education and Training knowing what blockchain does so today I will say the only really reason use case of digital identity through payments now to identify the beneficiary uh tokenization that's uh now we enter really in the fundraising and philanthropy world uh blockchain can be a huge game changer we believe in terms of Tok in terms of what we we say

philanthropy because nowadays if you think about the way that we get grants or donor help support on a specific project we still most of the time we do a reporting that is quite classical you send an evaluator you send photos you do a booklet and you show that's what we've done here's the results and therefore when we started thinking about tokenization uh things really clicked in terms of okay what about using this as a life tracker trust the tech instead of trusting the human uh will this actually build trust uh contribute to build efficiency transparency in the way we use the funds so we haven't launched anything yet but uh it's a new way to do

reporting uh we haven't launched anything yet because actually our next project is on algorand and we're going to actually be trying to use water tokens I'm doing all the different blockchains except ethereum and you'll know why after what and actually our project and we're the UN so at the end of the day you need to be like protocol neutral so we love like hearing from all protocols and ethereum you were missing on our on our map and and you'll understand afterwards way um so hide wordss is quite like straightforward uh we actually we have a lot of refugee camps where we re what we say reclaim water treat water or even think about solar energy as such and the idea here was really to okay can we

create a token which contributes uh sends back to to water what we call Wash it's a water and sanitation uh uh projects and we are about to launch this uh in a in a few weeks from now and we're going to be seeing how it can track and how maybe we can actually um work also in terms of Milestones budget funding you know like every token you arrive once you reach the total amount you were looking for for that particular refugee camp maybe it goes to another one starts funding another one so those are very interesting areas for us that we still there are a lot of projects I I really took the only and we can talk about it afterwards I only took like a selection of those when you enter fundraising as

well uh that's probably a project that most people hear us I mean no unit are about at least in the blockchain world it's all with Refugee Stak pool so a year and a half ago two years ago almost and uh we didn't do it on ethereum because ethereum was still proof of work and uh proof of work is really bad for us in terms of perception because already you have to imagine that at work every day I'm sometimes struggling to explain what I'm doing to some of the people in the UN organization and when I tell them I proof of work oh Bitcoin that's so bad perception Wise It's like oh my God so obviously when I started when we started thinking about okay let's stake you know and they were like well proof of work doesn't work so we

went to cardano yes why because they're proof of stake obviously and also because the foundation's in Switzerland so as long as the foundation's in Switzerland it actually makes my job easier because of the legal framework but so the idea the paino here was how do you benefit from from crypto without holding crypto because the UN still today it's a little bit like controversial to hold crypto because it makes you look as a as a as a speculative just to give you an example the cash assistance program uh when the pilot uh was successful what was successfully like launched in in Ukraine with very interesting results one of the first interviews that we got I think it was a

Washington Post but maybe it's a different but like a major newspaper from the US one of the question was aren't you guys um you know incentivizing or favoring speculation and gambling for refugees with those wallets uh well but we can tell you about how it helps no no but are you gambling so that was pretty much the question we will get so that's where we come from so step by step so when we were talking about staking with for refugees immediately it was about okay we don't want to hold crypto but we want to benefit from here so what we did we open a stick poool uh with Taurus stick poool operator um where all the rewards go to um the 14 most underfunded crisis

but 20% into Innovation Refugee Leed Innovation fund so we just tried this and uh as you can see you can do direct staking and little by little it's shown like management and Leadership that it's okay we can hold a little bit of crypto so we can also donate to stake and that's a reward allocation toward most pressing Refugee needs the 14 most underfunded crisis because everyone hears about Ukraine Ukraine is important you hear about about Sudan now it's very important but we're present in 134 countries and you know DRC you hear it now but uh it's been going on for ages and people usually like no I don't want to give for Congo and know Central African Republic don't even get me there

so for us it's very important some of the funds are on ear Mark so we can actually fund operations that never get funded and 20% towards the Innovation fund Refugee Le Innovation fund but there's no time for this today so that's where we are today with 6,600 Ada which is more or less the same in dollars uh and we've uh we had rewards around almost $200,000 more or less so which is a good Evolution already but we're testing other stuff uh we testing a loyalty program nowadays who gives uh to a charity online who makes donation D that that's actually a very good number because normally it's like a older

public older people so being in in a crowd like this today and having as many people giving to charity is is good because normally we know that the incentivization of of of you know donating and things like that it's not always there so we seeing if we can create a loyalty program uh that could actually reward by tokens any action you make when you share a post to share a fundraiser you actually get tokens you get points when you do and then you can exchange those tokens we will test if you can exchange them against goodies against special access to a conference you can actually red donate afterwards these kind of tokens we did this on ethereum a big fundraiser with Christies you maybe know the snow

yeah that was exactly in October uh we really like we realized that actually the ethereum community we didn't know them yet and uh that's one of the reasons uh we're here today with paa who works with me because we realize that nowadays uh etherum is a huge actor so let's get involved more and more with this community as we have like amazing projects with other protocols what about starting with ethereum as well so as I was saying because I see that time is running uh we've got plenty of challenges and problems so you guys probably thought of something fundraising not fundraising it's fine we we're takers because given the situation we can't really afford not to try uh next project that's the big news

I'm bringing to you here we're staking on ethereum so with launch nodes uh we about to launch this impact staking platform where where you can actually uh try uh decide how much percentage of your Stak uh of your rewards you want to donate to un HCR and um that's how it works and I see that time is here so that's just the beginning and you can actually uh scan this so we get your address email address and we can send you an email when it's actually on or but feel free to come after if want exchange so that's it any question yes just a second

ah cool catch I hope you was sure um yeah spin off so it's less strict yeah yeah my my question is basically do you also somehow connect these different experiments with each other because to some extent it's all about like good work in the world that happened and we want to know about it we want to make it transparent we want to fund it is there also like some way that you think of connecting them and connected to that question also is there a way that you actually like you have so many things and it seems like at least some of them actually work um what is actually like a scaled up version of that like what is

the scale that that can reach and do you plan to also roll it out bigger and um yeah that's I think so question for now that's great question PA actually was uh mentioning too I talk about spin-off but it is true that the we were set up as a Swiss foundation so we're still part of UNR unitan Refugee agency but they pay our salary for example but uh we are much more flexible in ter in terms of uh sandboxing testing new things when I was at HQ just to give you an example it took me six month to create a website for The Swiss for Switzerland uh because of you know service provider protocols and all that for and the website was what seven pages six month so obviously you cannot work

like this in blockchain so by setting up this Foundation we much much faster and the way we approach this is actually like you said we started with many things the fails which is not a failure you know the first like nft Drop with this actually they started talking about because apparently it was the first nft from a un organization drop you know like from us by a refugee so we're proud of it you know so those one we test we test and then we we try to scale up the stick pool on Carano for example we're testing now a B2B approach to see if it can be a viable solution uh for for businesses and and Foundations but obviously as you can imagine the adoption is not the same on cardano so I think we we will be developing and that's the reason why we now opening the

stake full I mean we're starting staking on eath because so we can offer various way of supporting and various option alternative way for supporting the the cause will be idea that we can come as a UNR agency and say he portfolio options y That's way that's a cool mic I like that isn't this like a super complicated thing like

to maintain like all these different blockchains and then like on top of that like this is like super cool I didn't have a clue you you guys were doing this and it's amazing but I really think you should be on ethereum like I'm biased but but yeah yeah but but like uh like like you're liing a token on algorand like who who who uses like algor yeah it's true like it's a pilot it's a pilot it's a pilot yeah like if it's a utility token like from what I understood like this would be like on ethereum like yeah the gas fees are high but you have like ethereum whales there they're going to buy it but that that's exactly your point nowadays you know like uh we we

cannot be not accepting project you know like meaning like we're not going to accept any any kind of project but as soon as someone comes up even more in in Switzerland for INR because we are you know this sandbox where we like to test things if you come up to us with a project that you like to test we've got the brand access to the field access you know the name and we we have no money so I mean you way it's like if you you you're willing to test it and spend some resources with us you'll get your result you'll get your legitimacy as well you viabil we test viability and desirability but then the end objective is indeed to to to be a protocol neutral and uh to validate that concept but of

course I hear you on ethereum will make sense for a tokenization product obviously yeah so I have like a different mentality so like uh I totally get you that you need to be neutral so that's fine and also like the go tribe where was it launched like it's blockchain on cardano yes it was sold out because I I I looked at it in on openc and like I couldn't find it yeah yeah no it's cardano it's actually it's a super interesting is the fact that we weren't expecting to do these kind of things but the stick pool brought a lot of community supports and people started like reaching out say can I do something for you guys can I advertising and it's actually a an artist from the US and they stopped the project but they did

the last one for us and it sold out in in in a few hours and same with chrisy the fundraiser same thing we don't know how to talk so it's not only a fundraising project it's also an advocacy project you know Chris's it was e the artist I mean we didn't know who to talk to really you know I was okay I have Twitter but so first first position we open and unfortunately with given the times now we had to to to close this position was a Comm manager for for blockchain projects and uh so she was always on Discord and things like that so for go tell that to a un organization we're on we're opening a Discord Channel wow you sure we got to do that so we're

really a testing R and uh again I get you because I get this every time I talk to a different protocol why are you going there what are you doing this there but hey I think that's exactly our role as well to see what each protocol can bring and at the same time we are we are helping to for adoption see we're working towards education training because that's the main thing and and that's another aspect that's super interesting some of the projects I didn't show today was really are in a global sou happening in a global South so you have like connectivity issues you have electricity issues so adoption they could we believe they could benefit from it a lot you know from uh I mean only talk about the cash assistance wallets but also it's where we get more

challenges as well because of structure yeah yeah yeah yeah I know be connect completely and also GRS for example completely last to here we will go to a Google form where we quickly how can we just cast your email or if interested leave it there or come talk to us and that that that's a funny

thing that's a that's a new presentation for one single reason very simple reason is that usually when I talk to aloran I bring aloran stuff cardano stuff cardano stuff but here I was you know what no I'm going to show everything we do with all the protocols and you know and get these kind of comments and questions because hey let's let's do stuff that's awesome thank you for having me like maybe thank you Pa this's last thank you so much for joining us and please give

another big round Applause for them he [Music]