Boosting Cardano In South Africa

[IMPACT]

Our solution is to host an appropriate outreach event where South African students, business personnel, and developers will feel welcome and learn about all they would need to know about Cardano and Catalyst on the basic level. Aside from education, participants will have the opportunity to interact and communicate with the tutors and among themselves. With this initiative, we are focused on educating members on the following topics:

• Introduction to Blockchain
• Introduction to Cardano
• Introduction to Project Catalyst

Various Catalyst roles (CA, vCA, Proposer, Referral, Challenge Team member, etc.)

• Introduction to Stake Pools
• Introduction to the Cardano Dev tools
• Introduction to Cardano Wallets (Yoroi, Nami, CC Vault, Daedalus, etc)

Proposal Structure:

• The grand outreach event will be hosted at the end of 3 months of getting funded.
• This is going to be strictly a Face-to-Face event.
• Both online and offline marketing strategies will be used to create awareness 
• The target audience would be University students, developers, businessmen and women, and government officials.
• We target to have not less than 100 participants showing up at the event.
• The event will be hosted in the city central …
• Preparation of presenters and review of presentation slide deck by the core team
• We’ll create social media pages (WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord) to onboard and engage attendees for subsequent events and workshops.
• We’ll help participants to set up their Cardano wallets, preferably, Yoroi, Nami to make their first token purchase and delegation.

The solution will increase the number of South Africans interested in the growth of the Cardano Community. At the end of a successful implementation, there will be an increase in the number of catalyst participation, quality of Project Catalyst projects coming through from the South African region, increase in the number of Cardano Dev participation, and increase in the number of individual interest in blockchain. 

Our main aim is to ensure that South Africans especially, University students, business personnel, developers, and government officials are exposed to the accuracy of information revolving around blockchain, its capabilities, and most importantly the opportunities it has for everyone.

• Internet Issues: Some hosting environments have a problem with internet connection. So, for the project to be successful, we will need to purchase internet devices that will allow us to connect to the internet. This will allow guests to connect with the internet so that they engage with the Cardano ecosystem.
• Attendance issues: Natural people are skeptical of things they do not understand. This can affect attendance. The alternative solution is simply blockchain content through marketing channels and use concepts that they can relate to. Another alternative solution is direct marketing, to approach Universities departments, business personnel, developers, and government officials.
• Long-Term foreseeable challenge: There might be challenges with the law in the long run. Consulting with a lawyer or building relationships with law students. This will be of great advantage to introduce them to the Cardano ecosystem while guiding us to position the project properly within South African law.

[FEASIBILITY]

Roadmap:

This would obviously not be the only outreach event our team seeks to host in South Africa. Remember, the goal is to boost Cardano and Project Catalyst's adoption rate in South Africa through diversification. This means that we’ll surely host more outreach events, workshops, hackathons, etc in iteration to ensure that the adoption rate of Cardano and Project Catalyst in South Africa is being uplifted. With this being said, we plan to attain at least a 10% boost in the adoption rate per event. Thus, our roadmap looks like this;

First and Second-month post-funding; Preparation towards the event:

• Booking of event space
• Booking of media coverage 
• Booking of catering service for snack preparation
• Online and offline marketing of the event
• Hosting of mini-seminars across Universities to spread awareness
• Visiting government officials' offices to give out invitations
• Preparation of presenters and presentation slide decks

3 months post-funding:

We would demonstrate our ability to boost Cardano/Catalyst adoption in South Africa by hosting our grand outreach event.

After 3 months:

Conduct an online survey to collate suggestions from event attendees as to what could be improved in subsequent events to be hosted and as well what they seek to do with the knowledge gained.

Please take some time to enjoy some of the beautiful images in the attachment section of the proposal confirming our experience in hosting outreach events successfully.

• 2000 USD - Organizing Team Incentivization Costs
• 1500 USD - Event Costs (Event Center Rental, Catering Services (snacks), Media Coverage Rental, Internet)
• 1200 USD - Presenters incentivization (200USD x 6)
• 3000 USD - Marketing (Ad Posters, Mini seminars, Face-to-Face Invitations)
• 2000 USD - Administrative Costs
• 500 USD - Miscellaneous Costs

This project is backed by a collaborative effort from a team with a wealth of cultural and technical experience in the Cardano community as well as in Africa. All team members are very active in Catalyst, and community groups across our ecosystem. They are a diverse bunch united by the Promise of Cardano:

Wada: Cardano-based community network of 25+ professionals focused on connecting the world to Africa using blockchain and AI. 20+ funded proposals with strong partnerships within the Catalyst ecosystem. A trusted source for both African-based projects and wider ecosystem contributions.

Catalyst School: The Catalyst School is a place created to enhance the impact of Catalyst as a whole by improving the contribution of all its different players and roles. We onboard new members and help improve their skills along the way, in any way they decide to engage with Catalyst: as a proposer, a Community Advisor, a Veteran Community Advisor, or without any specific role within the process.

Kaelo Lentsoe: Blockchain Education Network Ambassador for South Africa - [introducing students to the blockchain education network portal, inviting them to workshops, and mentoring them.], Wada country lead for South Africa.

Telegram: @KaeloLentsoe

Mail: lentsoekaelo@protonmail.com

[AUDITABILITY]

Key Metrics

• The number of potential attendees.
• The number of actual attendees.
• The number of attendees onboarded to the Cardano Development community.
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• The number of attendees onboarded to Project Catalyst to contribute to various roles.
• The number of new Cardano wallets created (Yoroi, Nami, CC Vault)
• 
  
• The number of viewership to our YouTube uploaded version of the event.
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• The number of follow-up calls, emails, and messages that come through seeking guidance and inquiries from the core team.

Having a strong network of University Students, developers, business personnel, and government officials from South Africa where ideas are explored. While educating them about Project Catalyst and helping them to engage with the Cardano ecosystem by becoming Community Advisors and submitting highly reviewed Catalyst Proposals.

At the end of 3 months;

• At least 100 individuals (university students, developers, business personnel, government officials) in South Africa have attended our event and are aware of Cardano and Project Catalyst.
• A good percentage of the total attendance has signed up to become part of the Cardano and Project Catalyst community.
• Individuals approach the core team with their innovative ideas to be fine-tuned into project catalyst proposals for submission.

This is a new proposal, in addition to the various Outreach Events hosted by Wada and The Catalyst School.

SDG Rating

Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.