Blockchain_In_The _ClassroomDAO

[MarceloSilva]

Name of Project

Blockchain In The Classroom DAO

Proposal overview

“Criarte is to become a part, not the owner.” (Emicida)

The proposal for a decentralized network of teachers aimed at providing education about Blockchain and Web3 in the public schools and social projects in poor areas in Latin America.

The Problem

Over the last decades the narrative about Latin America has turned from colors and hope to poverty and authoritarianism.

Within this reality, those who suffer the most are young people, especially the poor. Unemployment, school dropout and the precariousness of public education have generated a lack of perspective that rips off the greatest strength of the youth: their ability to dream.

At the same time, the Blockchain and Web3 industry emerge as tools to liberate, empower and build income for civil society. But, the lack of content in Portuguese and Spanish (not only the formal language, but in a language accessible to people with poor backgrounds) has built a wall that prevent these people from accessing this industry.

Community, innovation and creativity are one of the most scarce resources on earth and here in Latam we got a lot of those. Thats what gave birth to our proposal for an introductory course to Blockchain within the public schools in poor communities in Latin America.

The course

Over the 12 weeks of the course, students will learn the basics of blockchain technology and then dive into the solutions that DeFi and ReFi offer to typically Brazilian challenges such as deforestation and the difficulty in retaining, within communities, the value which they produce.

The course will be coordinated by professors Marcelo Silva (PhD in Practical Philosophy, Specialist in Business Law), Lucas Pacheco (Dev Front End) and Mariana Mota (lawyer and civil worker for sanitary issues).

Throughout the course, students will master not only the tech skills, but also the soft skills that web3 and Blockchain requires.

The main aspect that distinguish us is the merge of the belongingness and high qualification of the coordinators. We’re all sons of favelas in different experiences (black, white, woman) and we all achieve to obtain good skills in teaching, researching, economics, institutional design, law, etc.

The Community

We already have a partnership with a school in the neighborhood of Porto Canoa to provide the course to all the students of Hilda Miranda High School.

For now, as we don’t have any resources, we can attend just 30 students per week. But with the resources we’ll be able to attend all the 700 students of the school and expand to other schools in the neighborhoods around.

Why a DAO?

The project already exists in the city of Serra, state of Espirito Santo - Brazil, and it’s going well. This fact raise the question: why build a DAO?

The source of the success of the course, the low cost and the reach of the heart of the students is the fact that the teachers are linked to them in several ways.

Without that belongingness the project will be unable to reach the students. Without the resources, the people that reach the students will be unable to dedicate themselves to the task.

Thats why we aim to be a decentralized network of teachers that provide education and awareness about Blockchain and Web3 in the context of the public school and social projects in different communities in LATAM.

As we intent to expand to all regions of Brazil and LATAM, we need a solid and sophisticated tool for governance that will reduce the costs (both financial and institutional) and allow us to replicate the project elsewhere.

Sustainability

Sustainability (both institutional and financial) will be the main challenge of DAOs in the months to come, thats why we plan two approaches to this issue:

We see institutional sustainability as the main tie that keep several generations linked to the same goal, thats why one of the task of our governors is to educate the new ones about the tools, the challenges and the requisites of the role of governor.

The second approach is aimed at the accountability, thats why every governor will be tied to the tasks of two contributors. So both of them will manage the time and resources to prevent bad surprises.

About the financial sustainability, we have three approaches:

The first one is about consolidating our project as a reference of excellence so we can provide education to private schools and entities (always in a proportion of 7-3, seven public schools or social projects and three private entities).

Provide didactic content on demand for other DAOs and entities (due to the high cost of producing didactic content several institutions tend to re-use the same content in different approaches, but we know that the content produced outside the context of the student may lack the resources to reach his heart. Since the background will be one of our main resources, we’ll be able to produce didactic content with a reasonable cost.)

The third one will be the utilization of liquidity pools (both with and without impermanent loss) so we can produce income in the long term. Every resource which the schedule of expenditure is beyond a month will be allocated in a liquidity pool so it continues to produce fees that we can collect.

The First Expansion

In the first expansion (2022) the project will comprehend the Brazilian cities:

Serra, in the state of Espirito Santo. (30 students)
Macaé, in the state of Rio de Janeiro. (50 students)
Cubatão, in the state of São Paulo. (128 students)
São Luiz do Maranhão, in the state of Maranhão. (64 students)
Rio de Janeiro, state of Rio de Janeiro (10 students
Belo Horizonte, state of Minas Gerais (18 students)

Total for the first edition: 300 students

Our goals for the first year are:

1. Build the online structure of the project (website, telegram, discord, etc).
2. Build the administrative structure of the project (governance, accountability, legal, etc).
3. Build a network of cooperation with other institutions in order to reduce the cost and increase our efficiency.
4. Expand the project to at least two another countries of Latin America (Already in talks with Argentina and México)
5. Expand the number of new students to 1000.
6. Train 30 teachers in a year.
7. Build 2 MVPs for financial sustainability that can be replicated.
8. Build two online introductory courses about blockchain and web3 in Portuguese and Spanish (not only the formal language, but reflecting the culture of each country in Latin America).

Our goals for the first five years are:

1. Build an online academy to provide education, for free, for public schools and social projects. (2 years)
2. Train 100 teachers every year. (2 years)
3. Build an ecosystem of services among our partners. (2 years)
4. Have at least three countries with structures for financial sustainability. (4 years)
5. Train 1000 students a year in, at least, 3 countries of LATAM. (4 years)
6. Build at least 5 MVPs for financial sustainability that can be replicated. (5 years)
   7.Expand to all countries of LATAM. (5 years)

Mandates

I. Institutional Designing
Design the proposal for the structures of the DAO.

Deliverables: The proposal for the online structure of communications and decision making. The conceptual identity of the DAO. The designing of the social tokens and the “Listening” system.

II. Technology
Building (or coordinating) and maintaining the whole online structure of the DAO and helping with the didactic content.

Deliverables: The creation of the multisig, social token, website, form a team of tutors to help the students who show interest in learning to code.

III. Operational Coordination

1. Form the teams. 2. Operate the Listening system. 3. Keep track of the actions, deadlines, resources, and the demands.

Deliverables: Assign everyone with a list of tasks aligned with the first years goals of the DAO and develop a criteria to evaluate fulfillment of those tasks.

Our First Governors

Mariana Mota is a lawyer and civil employee from the countryside city of João Neiva. She is a specialist in Tax Law. Her main interests are the preservation of the environment and mental health of the youth.

Marcelo Silva is a Brazilian researcher (PhD) with a focus on institutional analysis and institutional design. My current research aims to build a model for liquidity pools that will fund initiatives with a positive impact in society and in the environment.

Lucas Pacheco is a FullStack Developer (PHP; MYSQL; Laravel; Docker; Firebase; CSS; SCSS; Javascript (Vanila, React JS, React Native) raised (Serra) and resident (Vitoria) in the state of Espirito Santo.

Our Contributors

Verber Souza , lawyer and DeFi specialist from Minas Gerais, Brazil.
Aline Silva, Social entrepreneur and athlete from São Paulo, currently living in Rio de Janeiro.
Melonie Brown coordinates a project about financial literacy in NY.
Fausto Vanin, blockchain entrepreneur and activist for 5 years. Co-founder of One Percent.
Diego Moraes, journalist from the state of Rio de Janeiro, works for Globo, which is the second biggest television channel in the world.
André Donadia , teaches English and Philosophy.
William Caldeira , photojournalism and design.
Diana Aguilar , journalist from Venezuela.

How the resources will be applied

The resources will fund the consolidation of our structure and the expansion to other regions of Brazil and LATAM.

The resources will be applied as follows:

Our governors will be able to dedicate full time to fulfill our goals as a DAO with a payment of US$ 200,00 a week.

We’ll be able to build hackathons to engage more students within the schools where we’ll be operating. (The money will fund the prizes)

We’ll be able to deliver some grants so our students have a chance to travel and visit startups and business that already operate within web3.

Social media management tools.
Productivity software (G Suite Professional, Canva, Calendly) Web hosting and domains
Setting up on-chain and off-chain voting (Aragon, Snapshot) Blockchain management and fees

Proposal ask

US$10.000 grant.

Metrics for success

1 full operational website
300 active people in our discord
1000 followers in our Instagram
1000 followers in our Twitter
500 students
3 Institutional partnership
2 structures of financial sustainability
2 Introductory courses on Blockchain and Web3 in Portuguese and Spanish.

External links

https://refazbrasil.notion.site/REFAZ-Esp-rito-Santo-fe0a649780eb4f598dfd4e14ec311fb5
https://twitter.com/ReFazBrasil2k22

ReFaz Brasil (@refaz_brasil) • Instagram photos and videos

[William_Caldeira]

Really awesome, this project changes lifes!

[dcarranza]

Really excited about this project that will bring Harmony & blockchain into new territories! Looking forward to seeing this DAO develop.

Approved by Danny & Juan for 10K per Project Y.

[xLabGuyx]

I’d like to set you up with some materials, I love making !

I’m gonna get back to you later. Just wanted to touch base real quick in case I forget

[jbeltran]

You have my yes.
Let’s do it!
I can’t wait to see the next steps on it going forward!

[frwrdslosh]

Hello @MarceloSilva

Thank you for submitting your proposal for a DAO grant.

I wanted to reach out and let you know that we are reviewing your proposal.

Our review process is fairly straight-forward. All grants come into our pipeline as Uncategorized. Once we have established what sort of grant they are (i.e. Launch Grant, Partnership, DAO, etc) we move them to the In Review stage.

The following stage is Need Info and this is where the community and the Funding Team and/or DAO Operations team asks for further information and makes sure that the proposal is in the proper format. This is usually the stage that takes the longest so, if you are looking to accelerate your grant process, ensuring that your request is in the proper format is the best advice we can give.

Once the proper information is gathered, the proposal moves into the To Approve category where the Funding Team and/or DAO Operations team gathers three "Strong Yes"s for approval.

Once those votes of confidence have been gathered, we announce the approval and request that the grantee fills out the Grant Funding form.

Please ensure that your proposal meets the DAO Funding Guidelines that Harmony has in place in order for DAO’s to receive a bootstrap grant. Note, that because a DAO meets criteria it does not guarantee approval for funding.

Thank you!

[MarceloSilva]

Hey @frwrdslosh thanks for the answer ˆˆ

I’ll not ask for the 50k of the Bootstrap category of grant before having the whole structure of the project online and working. Right now my only goal is for the 10k, so the team can start working to build the structure of the DAO. We’ll only ask for the Bootstrap grant after the DAO is already working and stablished…and only if we need to expand beyond our resources.

Right now my application is only for Project Y, since the project was launched and approved (by Danny and Juan) for the ETH Rio grants of Project Y.

[frwrdslosh]

Looping in @dcarranza

[MarceloSilva]

Hey everyone, since now our project is actually alive at Harmony, we’ll be sharing some updates here.

We’ll start with the origin of the project.

The original idea was to build an audience for an event of the ReFi Spring here in Brazil. Our first idea was to make the event at Bahia, but without any help from people from there it turns out as an impossible task. So, Espirito Santo, where I live, was the place to build the event.

Then, our main challenge was to have an audience here, because Espirito Santo is not as highlighted as Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo, so even if we had enough people from web3 to attend the event, it would be very hard to bring them together.

Hence the idea of teaching high school students about blockchain so we can have an audience. The next choice was where to start. And for some act of the gods or the orixás, or the pure randomness of the universe, a friend of my called André came to me asking me for a project that I’ve talked to him a year before (the first idea was to teach about the financial market).

So, I took a week to write down the proposal and to design the structure of the project of teaching the students for three months. Then…the next week there was me, within the classroom trying to convince high school students that Regenerate is the New Sexy.

PS: I’m a terrible photographer so I asked them to smile but forgot that they’re using masks hahah. How dumb am I?

In the next update we’ll bring something about the official agreement with the school. If you want to stay up to date and know everything that we’re doing, you can go straight for our Notion page and see what we done till now or go to our social media.

Thanks, again, @dcarranza and @jbeltran for the support!!!

[mariana_mota]

Hello, my name is Mariana. I’m a lawyer, specialist in tax law and I love working with people. My dream is to one day be able to dedicate myself exclusively to projects that promote culture and technology for young people and adults.

Currently, I am the coordinator of the BlockChain in the Classroom project and today I bring another update of the activities developed with students in the classroom.

In this second meeting, students learned the difference between money and value, the dynamics of the economy, the role of the Central Bank in the economy and the types of assets.

It was also taught how the validation system works within the blockchain network.

On the same day, Professor Marcelo Silva and the school director signed a term of commitment that formalizes the partnership between the BlockChain in the Classroom and the Hilda Miranda School, in the city of Porto Canoa, Serra-ES.

Here are some photos from this meeting.

Marcelo Silva and the school director signed a term of commitment that formalizes the partnership between the BlockChain in the Classroom and the Hilda Miranda School

[Lucasfpacheco92]

Hello everyone!

As a collaborator in the project, I’m excited to announce that our website was launched today

Together with the website launch, we are also making adjustments to the visual identity of the project, by using a new logo, improved colors, and fonts for the project.

Everyone is welcome to access it, by using these URLs: https://blockchainnaescola.tech or https://blockchainnaescola.dao

Anyone who wants to use the same strategy to create simple pages with multi-language support is free to fork the repository and go to town.

For the technical people or for those who might be interested, here is some additional technical info:

Github Repository: https://github.com/lucaspdude/blockchain-na-escola

Deployment: Vercel

Technologies used: Javascript (Next JS)

• Multi-Language Support - By using an implementation of i18n for React and Next JS.
• Tailwind CSS - Styling for this project was made using Tailwind CSS. – Dark Theme - Mobile Ready
• Contact Form Integration – For contact form integration, we are using COURRIER, checkout Sending emails with NODE JS and Courrier

[Maria_Luiza_Pereira]

Olá, me chamo Maria Luiza e sou aluna do projeto.
Gostaria de participar na área Play2Earn.

[Lari]

Olá!
Sou a Larissa, estudante do projeto Blockchain na Escola e tenho interesse nas áreas Learn2Earn e DeFi.

[Bryan]

Olá, eu sou aluno do curso e me chamo Bryan Jhonatã.
Gostaria de participar da Learn2Earn ou Play2Earn.

[mariana_mota]

Olá Maria Luiza, obrigado por demonstrar interesse na continuidade dessa nossa parceria. A equipe do projeto já deve ter entrado em contato contigo para dar prosseguimento. Parabéns por esse primeiro passo na sua carreira.

[mariana_mota]

Olá Larissa, obrigado por demonstrar interesse na continuidade dessa nossa parceria. A equipe do projeto já deve ter entrado em contato contigo para dar prosseguimento. Parabéns por esse primeiro passo na sua carreira.

[mariana_mota]

Olá Bryan, obrigado por demonstrar interesse na continuidade dessa nossa parceria. A equipe do projeto já deve ter entrado em contato contigo para dar prosseguimento. Parabéns por esse primeiro passo na sua carreira.

[MarceloSilva]

Hey, we got a lot of updates on our project, and they’re all on our notion page.

But here go some highlights of what we’ve done.

After signing the formal agreement with the principal of Hilda Miranda High School we started the classes as follows:

1. Presentation about how the economy work, the concept of money and value.

2. The Rothschild Family vs the British Treasury: Speed, Safety and Information. (This class was about the aspects that turn blockchain technology so interesting from a financial point of view.) Also, we learned how consensus algorithms work.

3. The third class was delayed because I was in Ethereum Rio, where I managed to build several partnerships in order to expand the project. Once we got back, we teach our students about the ecosystem around web3 and how they can start to prepare to pursue a career within it.

4. In the fourth class they learned how to set up a Metamask and they received their first Ones (I didn’t spend all the Ones that I received as a Blu3DAO scholar so I sent some to the students so they had their first experience earning crypto).
   

   

5. In the fifth class we discuss the evolution of blockchain technology and how we can make things faster and more efficient using this technology. (Something like a narrative of Bitcoin-Ethereum-Harmony)
   Outside the classroom, we were working on our first expansion based on our new partnerships.

6. In the sixth class the students were introduced to the 101.xyz platform, our access to the platform came from our partnership with BlackLeadersDAO and Tim Connors, the owner.
   

   

Another partnership that we made at this moment was with the Play4Change initiative. They provided us with 3 open positions for our students to learn about blockchain and crypto by playing Axie Infinity with their coach.
7. In the seventh class the students learned about the incentives provided by the web3 onboarding process and all the concepts related to the 2Learn idea.
8. In the eighth class, the students learned about the importance of community, and some of them (who show interest in participating in our partnership with Play4Change), were instigated to engage with the crypto community on Twitter, Instagram, and here in the Harmony Forum.
9. In the ninth class, the last one, we received students from other classes to talk about the project and about the recent developments within crypto.

If you want to see some pictures and details about our first journey as a project feel free to visit our Notion page and our website.

Well, now we’ll take two weeks to plan the expansion of the project and to onboard our new 4 members.

[jbeltran]

Thank you for sharing all the steps.
Are you getting feedback from them in any way?
Love to hear about it.
Congrats!

[MarceloSilva]

Now that we finished our first in-person experiment I’ll coordinate with a friend who knows how to operate a camera to try to do a quick interview with them. (The first idea was to hire someone to do that, but …bear market haha)

Right now the feedback that I have in my hands is their answers on google forms that we used to select the 4 students that proceeded to learn about GameFi (playing Axie Infinity) with the people from Play4Change.