PsyWORKshop - a portal for Mental Health with payments in ADA and CNA

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Dmitrii Bondarenko

[GENERAL] Are you delivering this project as an individual or as an entity (whether formally incorporated or not)

Individual

[GENERAL] Co proposers and Additional applicants

Alena Khalyavina

[GENERAL] Please specify how many months you expect your project to last (from 2-12 months)

6

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language.

No

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem (200-character limit including spaces)

Create a portal for psychotherapists and clients to practice mental health with payments in ADA and CNA.

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

No

[GENERAL] If YES, please describe what the dependency is and why you believe it is essential for your project’s delivery. If NO, please write “No dependencies.”

“No dependencies.”

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

No

[GENERAL] Please provide here more information on the open source status of your project outputs

Smartcontracts will be open source the rest of the code will remain private.

[METADATA] SDG rating

Good health and well-being

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution.

• What are my reasons to start this project?

I'm both a developer and psychotherapists. I have 2 professions and I know very well the difficulties that psychotherapists encounter as well as the problems of the sphere.

The problems that our team is solving by building PsyWORKshop are problems of many if not all psychotherapists. Here's the list of them:

• The global psychologists market was valued at $381 billion in 2020 (that does not include developing countries). And the numbers are rising, especially after the pandemic and in the context of ongoing military conflicts, global recession and rise of inflation and crime.
• However, many professionals cannot provide their services to international markets because of strictly defined, often outdated rules.

• Competition of Old and Modern Methods
• Psychotherapy is a new science (less than 150 years old). There are many effective approaches and methods, some of them are still created. Practitioners of old methods are trying to restrict newcomers from the market creating government-linked-associations that would issue permissions for practice. As a result, innovative psychotherapists, creators of new methods are left out.

• Geo-political and Administrative Barriers
• A psychotherapist from a developing country would not be allowed to practice online in a developed country, his education would not be recognized by the developed-country-government-linked-association of psychotherapists.

• Lack of Transparency
• While selecting a psychotherapist a client does not know much about him or her. How many hours of personal therapy does he have? Does he attend supervisions? How profound is his education?

• Absence of Universal Professional Ranking System for Psychotherapists
• It is often not clear why psychotherapist A charges X USD for his session and psychotherapist B charges X*3 USD. Is that because of experience? marketing? or other reason?

• Marketing and Finding Clients for a Psychotherapist
• It is often difficult for psychotherapists to promote themselves and find clients. Unlike in other professions working with friends and relatives is considered bad practice. On the other hand expert marketers even if not expert psychotherapists are able to find more clients.

• Lack of Work Ethics
• There’re many cases when a psychotherapist would try to take advantage of his client or his client's resources. Clients often don’t understand that a psychotherapist is breaking their boundaries or may not know how to deal with it.

How you will demonstrate or prove your impact?

• By building the portal for psychotherapists and their clients.
• By allowing payments in ADA and CNA at PsyWORKshop

[IMPACT] Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community.

PsyWORKshop aims to create a safe portal that would promote mental health, be a source of knowledge and a sandbox for experienced psychotherapists and beginners.

By using Cardano technology PsyWORKshop makes psychotherapists’ credentials transparent, yet preserves anonymity of clients and supervisors.

To reward psychotherapists’ knowledge and skill, and also to erase political and administrative borders PsyWORKshop introduces a psychotherapist ranking system that would be based on the verified amount of hours of personal therapy and other criteria.

ADA and CNA will be used as payment between Clients and Therapists. It is presumed that most users are not exposed to the Cardano ecosytem that is why PsyWORKshop will provide educational videos and text instructions.

As a result awareness about Cardano will grow as well the number of ADA/CNA holders, moreover users will get practical experience of interaction with the ecosystem.

[CAPABILITY & FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?

There're 2 aspects of the project:

• Web development
• Community building

Web development

As a frontend developer with +5 years of experience I have the knowledge and skills to build the project.

Tech stack that is being used:

Frontend: React.js / Redux / Typescript

Backend: Firebase

Smart Contracts: Marlowe

Onboarding psychotherapists

It would be very important to invite capable psychotherapists into the project, who would in their turn invite their clients and students to ΨsyWORKshop. For this purpose, ΨsyWORKshop will make partnerships with RUDN, MGI as well as with a few other colleges. As a psychotherapist myself, I know Russian psychotherapy market and some of the old guards who can help.

[Project Milestones] What are the key milestones you need to achieve in order to complete your project successfully?

Polish UI, bug fix:

1. Auth / Registration (Firebase).
2. Connect frontend endpoints to Firebase.
3. Video calls (WebRTC) - for psychotherapy session.
4. Psy requests - create request for psy help / display lists and types of psy requests.

1. To improve UX and make it easier to understand Cardano - Integrate educational videos and text instructions on how to use Cardano into PsyWORKshop.
2. Admin panel - to manage psychotherapists' ranks and moderate PsyJournal.

1. Smart contracts - payments between clients and psychotherapists.

1. PsyJournal - PsyJournal is website page where articles or videos created by psychologists will be displayed. Articles will be duplicated into social media. Here psychologists will be able to share knowledge and promote themselves and the project.

1. Partnerships with colleges. The idea is to invite experts and fresh graduates into PsyWORKshop where they will be able to easily find clients and work their way up the professional ladder guided by experts.

1. CNFT partnerships - Initiate partnerships with NFT creators by offering them to add utility to their NFTs: 1 NFT = 1 psychotherapy session. More info about it can be found on the website.

[RESOURCES] Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

Dmitrii Bondarenko - founder of the project.

His duties:

• Project management;
• Hire specialists for the project;
• Frontend development;
• Backend integration;
• Onboarding psychotherapists;
• Contacts with colleges and organizations;

Anastasia Polozova - frontend developer and educator

Her duties:

• Educational and onboarding materials;
• Frontend development;
• Onboard NFT artists & organizations;

[BUDGET & COSTS] Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

Milestone 1 - 1 month / 10.000 ADA

Milestone 2 - 1 month / 10.000 ADA

Milestone 3 - 1 month / 10.000 ADA

Milestone 4 - 1 month / 10.000 ADA

Milestone 5 - 1 month / 10.000 ADA

Milestone 6 - 1 month / 10.000 ADA

[VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

Within 6-12 month from launch ΨsyWORKshop plans to onboard +1000 psychotherapists; an average fulltime psychotherapist has 80-100 sessions per month with 10-20 different people. Psychotherapy session price at the portal varies from $5 - $1000.

ΨsyWORKshop will onboard about 15,000 regular users and assets circulation worth of about $750,000/month into Cardano ecosystems within 6-12 month after MVP launch.

The potential of the project, of course, is huge since the global psychologists market was valued at $381 billion in 2020 and that does not include developing countries.

My intention is to continue building ΨsyWORKshop because as a psychotherapist I see how little we as people enjoy the precious gift of life; how little mental health we have left, how little we know and understand ourselves, our emotions and feelings; and how easy it is for corporations to play us: make us give way to rage or fear... Psychotherapy is one of the ways to get inner balance, become more resilient, productive at work, kind and understanding to ourselves and those who we meet on our life journey.

[IMPORTANT NOTE] The Applicant agrees to Fund Rules and also that data in the submission form and other data provided by the project team during the course of the project will be publicly available.

I Accept