Interview with Head of UNICEF Blockchain: Why Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Should Be Introduced
Text | Edited by Nancy | Produced by Bi Tongtong | PANews
Text | Edited by Nancy | Produced by Bi Tongtong | PANews
Once upon a time, just holding a cardboard box to donate can extend the goodwill and warmth of "one party is in trouble, all parties support". Nowadays, the forms of charitable organizations are becoming more and more diverse, but the original intention has gradually gone astray. Misappropriation, fraudulent donations, misappropriation and other incidents are common, and charity has fallen into the quagmire of a crisis of trust.
Recently, in an interview with PANews during the ABS 2020 Asia Blockchain Summit, Christina Lomazzo, head of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) blockchain, said that in the past 5 years, UNICEF has been working hard to explore how to use blockchain Chains benefit children. At present, it is mainly from the two aspects of internal prototype design and innovation fund investment to continuously study the blockchain in depth, to explore its value in the work, and achieved good results.
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Shared goals with blockchain
As the word "philanthropy" begins to be misused and abused, trust has gradually been erased. And all this should be attributed to the "non-disclosure, non-transparency, and untimely" in the charity link. In fact, in the traditional charity field, due to the lack of relevant supervision and auditing, the process of raising and using money is difficult to be transparent and open. At the same time, under the lack of rigorous review of the real information of the recipients, fraudulent misappropriation of money is easy to occur, and the traditional donation process is cumbersome, which also results in high manpower and time costs.
“Before joining UNICEF, I had a unique opportunity to join the organization with blockchain-related experience such as Deloitte government. Blockchain is a technology suitable for solving problems of multiple entities. It is closely related to UNICEF. Foundations all have a common goal - to create a better world. However, it will take some time to reach a consensus on the application value exploration of blockchain and other technological innovations in various fields." UNICEF Block Chain leader Christina told PANews.
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Christina Lomazzo Source: Twitter
Christina also said, "We hope that the blockchain can bring three changes to UNICEF, one is to use innovative financing models to allocate resources; the other is to improve the efficiency and transparency of internal processes; the third is to motivate and encourage open source and digital public goods.”
In the matter of embracing the blockchain, UNICEF has practiced it in recent years and has become a leader.
In this regard, Christina told PANews that this is just a small example of the World Food Program, and they have been seeking to apply the emerging technology of blockchain in many fields. For example, in response to the new crown epidemic, the start-up they cooperated with, the Indian start-up StaTwig, worked with the local government to use the blockchain to improve the transparency and efficiency of the government's delivery of food to low-income communities.
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Source: The Economist
In addition, UNICEF has also been investing in early-stage blockchain startups, which they hope will actually provide economic support to disadvantaged groups. Since launching the Innovation Fund in 2016, UNICEF has invested in more than 50 start-ups in 35 countries. For example, OS City, a Mexican startup dedicated to issuing blockchain-based government assets, and W3, a startup dedicated to using blockchain to provide mobile messaging to low-income areas such as refugee camps in Bangladesh, etc.
It is understood that in addition to providing start-ups with an economic support of up to US$100,000 (USD + digital currency), UNICEF also has an internal blockchain expert team that can provide technical assistance to investment companies, and It can also help identify and improve their solutions.
Of course, these start-up applications also have some restrictions and conditions. Including: (1) private companies that must be registered in UNICEF member countries; (2) committed to open source technology solutions, or willing to open source under the following licenses or equivalent licenses: BSD, GNU, MIT (software), CERN , MIT, TAPR (hardware), or CC-BY (content); (3) have an existing prototype of the solution and have achieved results in initial pilot runs; (4) the solution has the potential to positively impact the lives of children .
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The "pioneer" of cryptocurrency
For the emerging field of cryptocurrency, there are still many people who are cautious or not optimistic, not to mention willing to explore and experiment. The openness of UNICEF has surprised many people. As early as 2015, they actively embraced cryptocurrencies.
In October 2019, UNICEF launched the Cryptocurrency Fund, the first UN organization to support cryptocurrency donations. Once established, the institution has received widespread attention from the encryption community and received a donation of 1 Bitcoin and 10,000 ETH from the Ethereum Foundation.
You know, in 2019, only 12% of the top 100 charitable organizations in the United States accepted Bitcoin donations. Even though the 75-year-old UNICEF has pioneered the nascent cryptocurrency space, that doesn’t mean they support any cryptocurrencies. In their view, the digital economy and digital currency have the potential to shape the lives of future generations, and it is necessary for them to explore the significance of digital assets in future operations.
"Some of the donors we have contacted are very interested in using digital currency to donate. The establishment of the encryption fund will not only allow UNICEF to use digital assets, but also allow us to explore innovative ways to redistribute resources. An important step forward. In particular, digital currency allows us to clearly know the source and destination of funds, and can also mobilize funds in a short period of time, reducing a lot of money and material transportation costs. Of course, for better To show the flow of funds to the public, UNICEF launched the website of the encryption fund, and any information can be traced, such as fundraising details, fund flow, etc.” Christina told PANews.
In addition to accepting cryptocurrency donations, UNICEF also uses cryptocurrencies to invest in start-ups that apply open source technologies. Just last month, UNICEF provided 125 ETH to eight projects each to scale up or prototype their respective technologies over the next six months.
It is worth mentioning that in the process of investing, UNICEF effectively uses cryptocurrencies. As we all know, traditional remittance methods have problems such as slow process, high fees, corruption, etc., and the use of cryptocurrency can solve these problems very well. In the investment case above, it took less than 20 minutes for their cryptocurrency funds to be transferred to 8 technology companies from 7 different emerging economies.
In addition, Christina revealed that UNICEF is developing its encryption fund to build a series of tools to enable organizations to collaborate more efficiently. UNICEF is developing a series of applications to help them deal with digital assets, such as more practical blockchain valuation tools.
It has to be said that UNICEF has made blockchain and cryptocurrencies play an important role in its global humanitarian efforts. As the highest-level organization in the world that promotes humanitarian causes, the United Nations has used actions to rectify that blockchain technology can make it a more efficient new force.
