Mar 13, 2019

UNICEF is the latest international organization that is looking into the potential applications of blockchain technology to innovate and help disadvantaged children. The non-profit organization is currently in conversation with Kyrgyzstan’s government to provide Internet access to every school in the country.

Blockchain technology is increasingly considered by more mainstream groups as a possible alternative to technological, cultural and other challenges faced today.

UNICEF exploring blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies

For example, UNICEF’s Office for Innovation which supports children from around the world by applying technology, understands that blockchain technology can be used in 3 main ways to benefit children by donating money, shedding more light in internal processes, and promoting tokenization to facilitate transactions.

Project Connect, founded by Greg Wyler, was conceived as a platform “to bring together the technology industry, academia and NGOs to work with UNICEF,” and was eventually put within UNICEF’s main operations after the first year of its success. Envisioned as a vehicle for change, Project Connect operates as a venture inside UNICEF’s Office of Innovation with the aim to map every school in the world. The venture wants to “provide real-time data assessing the quality of each school’s Internet connectivity, eventually creating an observable metric of society’s progress towards enabling access to information and opportunity for every community on Earth.”

Munir Mammadzade, deputy representative for UNICEF Kyrgyzstan, told CoinDesk that: “We are at the early stages of exploring a blockchain-based solution for the Project Connect initiative in Kyrgyzstan where the government is working with UNICEF and the private sector to connect every school in the country to the Internet and provide access to information and opportunity to all young people.”

Christopher Fabian who co-founded UNICEF’s Innovation Unit with Erica Kochi in 2006 and whom is currently running UNICEF Ventures, told CoinDesk that within this year Project Connect will explore the use of a blockchain application for improving and monitoring Internet connectivity levels in 1,560 schools based in Kyrgyzstan. Already, more than 150,000 schools across the world have been mapped for Internet connectivity levels and, according to Fabian, “Right now, we’re still at a very early modular stage, doing the mapping, getting the connectivity piece and figuring out the accounting.” In terms of blockchain and payments, Fabian explained that “You can easily see where the blockchain layers would come in … If you want to pay as a donor — government or company — for a whole section of the country to come online, wouldn’t you rather do that in a way that is authentic and real and accountable as opposed to just sending money somewhere and hoping two years later that something happens?”

Blockchain tools at the service of UNICEF

UNICEF has invested in six blockchain projects through the Innovation Fund. According to CoinDesk, Fabian referred to two of the blockchain startups that received $100,000 each, last December and which are being considered by the NGO and the Kyrgyzstan government: Tunisian startup Utopixar and W3Engineers, a Bangladesh-based web application development and consulting firm. Utopixar is a building blockchain platform that “enables communities to issue, distribute, and exchange their own impact tokens.” W3Engineers is “specifically looking at how to parcel out a gigabyte.”

Blockchain’s innovative applications to provide actual help to real people, specifically children, is remarkable, and we will definitely be watching out for UNICEF’s work and related initiatives.