The Cardano community is heavily based in North America and Europe.

Growth elsewhere requires our support and initiative as a community.

A wide spectrum of people from Latin America or with connections to Latin America coming together and forming teams to grow our ecosystem.

Basic metrics to look for to determine the effectivity of this challenge will include:

• The volume of proposals originated by Latin Americans participating in Project Catalyst.
• The quality of those proposals as well as the impact on their local communities.
• Did we attract new members of the community from Latin American countries?
• Will we see an increase in transactions processed (blocks minted) in Latin America? New SPOs forming?
• What can we learn from funded proposals when it comes to building on the initial successfully funded proposals from this challenge setting?
• Will applications be developed that might be useful in other parts of the world?
• Will there be measurable improvement in the lives of people who are attracted to the Cardano ecosystem?

As in Africa, raising the awareness levels of regular people in Latin America about blockchain technology and the Cardano protocol should be a priority for the Catalyst community. Providing the funding for those people who learn about our protocol to take advantage of the protocol and the support the community offers seems to be why we work together, doesn't it?

Within our community we have some outstanding people from Latin America working with us to grow the ecosystem. Let's give our fellow community members a funding category they can point to within their local communities as a means to take part in this revolution of technology.

The overwhelming majority of stake pools are based in North America and Europe. The Cardano protocol will be much more resilient and productive for people all around the world when the Catalyst community steps up and intentionally supports those who would like become a part of the stake pool network.

Some of the Catalyst community's original members come from Latin America, let's capitalize on that initiative and bring more people from this wonderful part of the world into the Cardano ecosystem. 

Clarification

Rodrigo and I would like to be clear that there is no attempt on our part here to earn any reward for this proposal. We do not believe it needs a team for autonomous people to be able to make proposals that help Latin Americans to take part in the Cardano ecosystem. Teams will form organically, as they have in Africa. 

We trust the community to make constructive comments and we trust the gradually improving assessment process to weed out charlatans.

The amount of funding we are proposing equals 6.25 % of the total available for Fund 7. Our suggestion is that this is a nice percentage to use as a guide for future rounds when funding increases for all of the challenges that focus on specific regions.

Acknowledgements

This proposal mimics the Grow Africa, Grow Cardano proposed by @grebel and @archangelbob in Fund 3 and is intended to provide the same funding model for Latin America.