Add SDG ratings to proposals - AIM

Objective and solution

The objective of the challenge is to enter into global partnerships with UNDP and the world bank group in 3-6 months and with developing local community centers in 130 countries. With such a big objective the budget of the challenges is limited to 30,000 so we suggest a strategy that will make it easier to match between catalyst ecosystem and the global organizations. It will then be easier & faster to find the best partnership opportunities and the local hubs will be developed through those partnerships utilizing already available hubs.

Cardano's mission and the strong values of the community come hand in hand with SDG objectives. Many of Cardano's projects/proposals could lead to collaboration opportunities with UNDP, the World Bank, and many other organizations.

More info about SDGs could be found here: https://sdgs.un.org/goals

The solution is therefore to build a mechanism to be able to easily identify and rate the most suitable projects on Cardano to facilitate third-party collaborations. Catalyst team or partners receiving access to such database will be able to easily search and select relevant proposals/projects for the potential partnerships.

GDP rating will also be a great tool for the community and voters aiming to support projects which solve SDG-related issues. Proposal owners will be exposed more to the SDG model and will consider the impact of the proposal starting from day 1.

Workflow process:

1. Evaluation stage: week 0 - week 4

Go through all fund 6 winning proposals and analyze: how many proposals have impact objectives or impact implications, what SDGs they are solving, how scalable the impact could be, what are the impact measurement used, how the impact could be recorded and reported.

The methodology will be to review all the proposals and have discussions with the teams where relevant.

2. Analysis stage: week 4 - week 6

Put together the information, analyze it and present the results

The recommended mechanism will include the following areas

    A. How to best tag proposals/projects with relevant SDGs including the sub-levels of each SDG

    B. How to integrate quantitative measurements as part of the project/proposal. This will be directly connected to an ongoing impact reporting requirement during the various stages of the project.

   C. Mechanism for rating proposals from 1-5, 5 being high impact and while taking into account the impact areas, potential scale, and how the impact is being measured and reported.

For this proposal, the key focus is on adding the SDG to the proposal process and analyzing the proposals so we can focus on partnerships. We will also suggest a mechanism to measure & register impact and rate proposals' impact accordingly. Which can then be developed in the next phase.

3. Integration to IdeaScale: week 6 - 10

Communication with IdeaScale and catalyst teams to integrate the SDG into the proposal process and creating the database and filters to search proposals.

Finetune the key features/ to be included in the process.

The first database will include the proposals from fund 6. 

4. Promotion and partnerships: Week 8 - Week 12

Once we have the analysis of the proposals we could share targeted proposals with multiple relevant organizations based on the SDGs and location. We will prepare marketing materials for an attractive communication. The team has a good network and will

We will aim to partner with the SDG LAB Geneva https://www.sdglab.ch/ where we have contacts and it could be a good initial entry to more partnerships. Another potential partner will be www.seedstars.com that also has local hubs in developing countries which could be used to promote Cardano and as a source for new proposals coming from developing countries.

Based on the analysis of the database we can evaluate PR and social media activities

During this phase, we will also map global organizations and their international hubs locations

Key metrics

# of proposals that match SDG and per segment of SDG

# Partnership with SDG Lab and Seedstars

# of lead generation for partnerships with organizations including the potential scale to their local hubs

At the end of the 12-week process, Cardano will be able to use a framework model for partnerships between the Catalyst ecosystem and international organizations.

Based on the learning and discussions, the proposal team will also offer the next steps of integration of SDGs into the Cardano ecosystem to facilitate more partnerships and local hubs to support the goal of Cardano "making the world work better for all".

Another important metric to follow is how SDG has become of growing importance in the Cardano community and support other activities.

Team

Yoram Ben-Zvi - a social entrepreneur - https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoram-ben-zvi-446836/

20 years of business & tech experience, in the last 3 years Yoram is focusing on combining impact and business. 3 years ago he left his comfort zone and joined an NGO Earthworm.org to work on sustainable business models across agriculture supply chains. Yoram also works with tech impact companies such as GivingWay.com.

Razali Samsudin - Educator & Social Entrepreneur https://www.linkedin.com/in/razali-samsudin/

Razali is an Educator, Editor, Digital Economy, Blockchain & Sustainability Researcher, Social Entrepreneur, Catalyst Proposal Mentor, Wada UN SDG, and Education Coordinator, Co-Founder of Sustainable ADA & Catalyst School Core Member

Gabriel Sosnowiez - marketing expert - www.linkedin.com/in/gabriel-sosnowiez-b6216116/

Gabriel has a strong corporate marketing experience working for P&G and in the last 5 years as an independent company, https://www.xceed.ch/, serving leading brands. Gabriel will support with the marketing and communication materials needed for promotions (PPT, one-pager)

In collaboration with Cardano AIM

Cardano AIM (Assembly Inspiring Masses) is currently made up Lucio, Victor, Phil, Razali and a number of supporters. We are all active Catalyst Community members and currently design and build tools that support the community. These include the popular voter-tool (https://cardanocataly.st/voter-tool/#/), the Community Advisor Tools (CA and vCA-tools) (https://cardanocataly.st/ca-tool/#/ & https://cardanocataly.st/vca-tool/#/)))))))) as well as the community landing page (https://cardanocataly.st/)

Victor is an active Catalyst Member, Community Advisor and Proposal Mentor, member of the 1st Catalyst Circle, leader of the Catalyst School, core member of the Catalyst Swarm, and has a strong professional and academic background in Engineering, Mathematics, Data Science and Machine Learning.

Lucio is a developer with 9+ years of experience (mainly focused on web/mobile. Languages and frameworks: PHP, Javascript, Typescript, Python, Ruby - Laravel, Ruby on Rails, Wordpress, Angular.js, Vue.js, Node.js). CA and vCA, co-creator of the Community Tools (Proposer/CA/vCA/Voter Tools).

Phil has experience as an accountant, UI/UX frontend and graphic design and business advisor amongst numerous other pursuits. He currently has a lead position in the development and direction of Cardano AIM and is co-creator of the Community Tools

The proposal team goal is to make social & environmental sustainability a strong part of the Cardano community and Ecosystem. The team is involved in multiple impact activities and is also part of Grow Cardano Sustainability Telegram group.

Budget

The proposal's time scope is 12 weeks where we will have a budget of $2,500 per month for the various tasks which will be about 50% position based on European modest salary. However, we will dedicate our best efforts and time needed to make this proposal a success. Here are some detailed budget per task

Evolution stage $2,500

Analysis stage $1,000

Integration to ideascale $1,000

Promotion activities $3,500

Total budget $7,500

Challenges

There will be challenges on the way to success, here are some:

Challenge 1 - integration to IdeaScale

The integration should be fairly simple, but integrating with a third party always holds some risk as not all depend on your side. We count on Catalyst to support us in this process once the community approves the proposal.

Challenge 2 - budget and ongoing activities

The budget of the overall challenge is $30,000, so we looked at the most cost-effective way to reach the challenge objectives. There might be a need for additional resources to form partnerships with external organizations and develop additional tools.

Challenge 3 - limited of SDG proposals

The results of the analysis phase might reflect that only a limited number of proposals are actually SDG-related (i.e. less than 10%) which could impact potential partnerships opportunities. It will be a very important measurement to understand and suggest actions accordingly. 

Challenge 4 - measurement and verification

When we talk about impact, measurements and verification are very important but also very challenging. There might not be a simple solution and we will aim to suggest a base that could be developed ongoing.

Summary

SDG is the common language today among UN development programs, the world bank group, and other global organizations. Integrating SDGs into the proposal ecosystem and Cardano ecosystem in general is therefore highly important in order to facilitate partnerships. The plan is feasible and the team is dedicated to integrating more social and environmental impact mechanisms into the Cardano ecosystem.

Thank you for taking the time to evaluate the proposal. We welcome any feedback, questions, and suggestions. We also welcome anyone who wishes to contribute to the success of the proposal. We appreciate the CA, VCA, and voter's time and attention.