Name of DAO
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:
- Build the online structure of the project (website, telegram, discord, etc).
- Build the administrative structure of the project (governance, accountability, legal, etc).
- Build a network of cooperation with other institutions in order to reduce the cost and increase our efficiency.
- Expand the project to at least two another countries of Latin America (Already in talks with Argentina and México)
- Expand the number of new students to 1000.
- Train 30 teachers in a year.
- Build 2 MVPs for financial sustainability that can be replicated.
- 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:
- Build an online academy to provide education, for free, for public schools and social projects. (2 years)
- Train 100 teachers every year. (2 years)
- Build an ecosystem of services among our partners. (2 years)
- Have at least three countries with structures for financial sustainability. (4 years)
- Train 1000 students a year in, at least, 3 countries of LATAM. (4 years)
- 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
- 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 for the first year
1 full operational website
300 active people in our discord
1000 followers in our Instagram
1000 followers in our Twitter
300 students
3 Institutional partnership
2 structures of financial sustainability
2 Introductory courses on Blockchain and Web3 in Portuguese and Spanish.
External links
Where everything begins:
https://refazbrasil.notion.site/REFAZ-Esp-rito-Santo-fe0a649780eb4f598dfd4e14ec311fb5
Our newborn twitter:
https://twitter.com/ReFazBrasil2k22
Our newborn Instagram: