[Proposal setup] Proposal title

Please provide your proposal title

Cardano Hub NBO - Grassroot Community Building by LidoNation

[Proposal Summary] Budget Information

Enter the amount of funding you are requesting in ADA

46800

[Proposal Summary] Time

Please specify how many months you expect your project to last

12

[Proposal Summary] Translation Information

Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated

No

Original Language

en

[Proposal Summary] Problem Statement

What is the problem you want to solve?

Real mass adoption will come through grass roots engaged Cardano communities. Cardano needs experimentation & good playbooks for creating, maintaining & growing local Cardano grassroots communities.

[Proposal Summary] Project Dependencies

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

No

Describe any dependencies or write 'No dependencies'

No dependencies

[Proposal Summary] Project Open Source

Will your project's outputs be fully open source?

Yes

License and Additional Information

Although it is a non-technical project; we are ready to share our reports with the community so that everyone who wants to use them for beneficial purposes for the development of the ecosystem can use them. Any digital content produced will be available for free to the community.

[Theme Selection] Theme

Please choose the most relevant theme and tag related to the outcomes of your proposal

Connected Community

[Campaign Category] Category Questions

Who you’re targeting, how you’ll reach them, and why this matters for Cardano.

We are targeting the general public and business owners to increase cardano adoption both in regular user count and businesses building on Cardano. We are also targeting college students to seed future Cardano use cases and developers to grow Cardano open source maintainers.

Provide a list of key activities of your project?

Here are the activities we have in mind:

• Monthly Educational Meetups (12 Total)

• Dev Open Hours

• 2 Open Source Hackathons

• Interactive Youth Engagement through Adventures

• Cardano Hub Website

What are your success metrics?

Attendance:

• Monthly meetups & event participation.

Engagement:

• Number of wallets created
• social media posts
• Governance Participation
• Intersect & other MBO memberships.
• Open Source commits
• CIP Editing contribution
• Smart Contract deployed to mainnet

Hackathon:

• Code contribution to cardano open source libraries
• Attendance to office hours after hackathon

Content: Website visits, blog reads, & video views.

Youth Onboarding: Number of youths onboarded through adventure trips with successful wallet interaction. Number of student groups formed on campus.

[Your Project and Solution] Solution

Please describe your proposed solution and how it addresses the problem

The Lido Nation brand is known for user education and onboarding within the community. What is less known is that Lido Nation also provides mentorship and internship opportunities for software developers. This second bit largely takes place physically in Nairobi Kenya.

**What we’ve done so far: **

Ngong Road Blockchain Lab

In fund 7, we partnered with a local NGO and extended their facility to launch the Cardano Blockchain Lab in Kenya. This was by all metrics a rounding success. The lab has helped translate over 3 dozen articles to Swahili and helped mentor over 40 developers; over a dozen now have full time jobs within the Cardano community.

Wada & Lido Launches Blockchain Centre Nairobi

After successful operations at the Lab built from containers, we’ve quickly outgrown the space. Earlier this year we teamed up with our friends at Wada Global to create a space that can hold 50 to 100 people to facilitate developer workshops, hackathons and conferences. We’ve a created a beautiful space:

Already other grassroots communities are taking advantage to host their events. Avalanche, SUI, Base, SingularityNet have all held community events at the space. You can check out the space and events lineup at https://www.blockchaincentrenbo.com

Conjuring Cardano from the mural:

From the very start, the new space had its roots in being by the community, for the community. Here is a video of the community painting the mural for the space: https://x.com/BCentreNBO/status/1926985021623013467. The keen eye will notice Cardano was always destined to be a key part of the space.

What we will do

Our proposal is to use this beautiful space to grow and nurture the Cardano community in the Nairobi area. Through regular reporting and information sharing with cardano communities around the globe, we hope to create a playbook for creating effective Cardano grassroots communities.

More details on key activities we have in mind to start:

Monthly Educational Meetups (12 Total)

Host monthly in-person meetups on Cardano fundamentals, Cardano use cases, and practical learning. These will be open to all and serve as regular community touchpoints for learning and networking, with the target of attracting 50 or more attendees.

2 Open Source Hackathons

We will organize two incentivised hackathon events aimed at contributing to any core cardano repo maintained by Intersect, IOG, Emurgo, Cardano Foundation or open source libraries heavily used within the ecosystem. The goal of the hackathon will be to get people in a room on a Saturday or overnight, charged with pizza, coffee, and other refreshments for 5 to 6 hours, contributing code to cardano core.

Dev Open Hours

A dedicated weekly in person session where lido nation developers will be available physically in the space for the community to come and get help or onboarded onto Cardano development. Our goal is to create at least 5 long term contributors to Cardano core or community libraries.

Interactive Youth Engagement through Adventures

Introduce free outdoor events like hikes combining fun with short blockchain learning sessions. Participants will receive guided wallet setups and free ADA to interact with the Cardano ecosystem.

Cardano Hub Website

Build a website to share event updates, blogs, articles, and educational content. This will serve as a knowledge base and engagement platform.

[Your Project and Solution] Impact

Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community

After a year of monthly iteration and learning and documenting, we would have:

• Onbaorded new open source contributors
• CIP process contributors
• New ada holders
• And a playbook document that others can experiment with to bootstrap or grow their local grass root communities.

[Your Project and Solution] Capabilities & 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?

Lido Nation is already on the ground delivering high levels of adjacent work:

• Via our initial effort with the Ngong Road Blockchain Lab we’ve mentored 40 developers. 12 of which now either works at Lido Nation full time or other community projects within the ecosystem.
• www.blockchaincentrenbo.com community hub space is live with 10 community events under our belt in just 3 months.

**Experienced Organizers: **

The team includes individuals with deep involvement in local tech ecosystems, previous participation in blockchain events, and experience coordinating educational programs and meetups. We’ve already brought together the local community to contribute to various cardano processes via these successful cardano events:

• Catalyst Fund 12 Launch event
• Constitution Consultation Workshop
• Intersect Annual Members meeting
• Cardano budget review workshop

[Milestones] Project Milestones

Milestone Title

Milestone 1: Hub Setup & Kickoff

Milestone Outputs

• Operational physical hub established
• Website and social media channels launched
• Core team onboarded and introduced to the community
• First community meetup held
• Prep for first hackathon completed and announced

Acceptance Criteria

• 12 months contract signed with Blockchain Centre NBO
• cardano hub nairobi website is viewable
• Community manager engaged
• Notes, attendance records and post-mortem from community meetup held.
• Hackathon event published with schedule of events and rules.

Evidence of Completion

• Copy of contract will be published to a public google drive
• Users will be able to visit the new website
• Community Manger will be publicly introduced
• Notes and outcomes from the meetup will be published to a public google drive
• Events announcement and details will be available on the new cardano hub nairobi website

Delivery Month

2

Cost

10650

Progress

20 %

Milestone Title

Milestone 2: First Hackathon, Community Engagement & Content Rollout

Milestone Outputs

The big idea for this milestone to start to have a cadance and structure to running the community. The specifics are:

• 5 monthly meetups completed
• Educational blogs and youtube videos released
• 1 outdoor blockchain adventure trip completed
• First Hackathon session concluded

Acceptance Criteria

• Meetings notes, attendance counts, and post-modem of each meetup are published to a public google drive folder.
• 3 articles are published the cardano hub website
• 2 videos are published to the cardano hub nairobi youtube channel
• Attendance counts and post model of adventure trip is published to the hub website
• Write up of the hackathon include announcement of winners published to the hub website

Evidence of Completion

• Meeting notes published to public google drive folder
• Articles will be live on the hub websites
• Videos will be live on youtube
• Blockchain adventure trip attendance and post-mortem report will be published to the hub website
• Hackathon writeups will be published to the hub website.

Delivery Month

6

Cost

15100

Progress

50 %

Milestone Title

Milestone 3: Scaling Impact

Milestone Outputs

The big idea here to have our grove by now.

• First draft of a playbook
• 8 Monthly Meetups completed
• 1 outdoor trips executed
• Second set of educational content produced and tracked
• Prep for second hackathon

Acceptance Criteria

• Meetings notes, attendance counts, and post-modem of each meetup are published to a public google drive folder.
• 3 articles are published the cardano hub website
• 2 videos are published to the cardano hub nairobi youtube channel
• Attendance counts and post model of adventure trip is published to the hub website
• Events announcement and details will be available on the new cardano hub nairobi website

Evidence of Completion

• Meeting notes published to public google drive folder
• Articles will be live on the hub websites
• Videos will be live on youtube
• Blockchain adventure trip attendance and post-mortem report will be published to the hub website
• Hackathon event published with schedule of events and rules.

Delivery Month

9

Cost

10850

Progress

70 %

Milestone Title

Milestone 4: Reporting & Playbook published

Milestone Outputs

• Completion of the remaining 4 meetups held (total of 12 in year)
• Second Hackathon Concluded
• Final M&E report (participant growth, demographic data, learning outcomes)
• Final draft of a playbook

Acceptance Criteria

• Meetings notes, attendance counts, and post-modem of each meetup are published to a public google drive folder.
• Write up of the hackathon including announcement of winners published to the hub website
• Final Closeout Report
• Final Closeout video

Evidence of Completion

• Meeting notes published to public google drive folder
• Closeout Videos will be live on youtube
• Closeout report will be published to public google drive folder
• Hackathon writeups will be published to the hub website.

Delivery Month

12

Cost

10200

Progress

100 %

[Final Pitch] Budget & Costs

Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources

• Monthly Meetups: 15,500
• 2 Hackathon Event: 5,000
• Physical Hub Space (Rental): 6,200
• Prize Pool: 900
• Marketing & Media: 2,000
• Educational Content Development: 1,200
• Website Development & Maintenance: 1000
• Outdoor Blockchain Adventures: 2,000
• Team Stipend : 8,000
• Community Engagement & Outreach: 2,500
• Contingency (5%): 2,500

All prices are in Ada

[Final Pitch] Value for Money

How does the cost of the project represent value for the Cardano ecosystem?

We will be experimenting with building and retaining a medium to large size grassroot community for 12 months. By the end of the 12 months not only do we hope to increase participation in Cardano governance processses and contributing to Cardano Open source, we will publish a playbook for other to repeat in other cardano community. This is a great value that will continue to pay dividends years after the proposal is closed.

[Required Acknowledgements] Consent & Confirmation

Terms and Conditions:

Yes