The Africa Catalyst School

[IMPACT]

Establish an Africa Catalyst School to be run by a joint team of experts from the main Catalyst School, Africa Catalyst Community Experts and Cardano Ambassadors who have the knowledge and experience to provide high quality onboarding services. It is expected that an Africa oriented Catalyst onboarding team can sustain the momentum that will be generated by the proposed Catalyst Africa Town Hall among the youth in the local communities.

Given the large proportion of youth in Africa,( Almost a billion people below 35 years as at 2020) the continent provides a huge opportunity for the rapid expansion and adoption of Cardano and Catalyst. A lot more effort must therefore be expended to engage Africa more effectively.

Most newcomers to Project Catalyst have experienced the challenge of understanding the entire Cardano and Catalyst framework and how it operates. To participate effectively in any role whether CA, vCA, Proposer etc. newbies must adopt an intentional approach to navigate the various online platforms and channels of communication and integrate into the community.

The Catalyst School has been very active in onboarding new people onto Cardano and Catalyst however, Africa’s participation in the Catalyst School’s activities is quite low for a couple of reasons including:

-    Many people in Africa have absolutely no knowledge of Cardano and Catalyst

-    A large francophone community (141 million people and growing) and Arabic speaking community (140 million people) which is largely not engaged

-    People struggle to understand some live and recorded sessions because they are unfamiliar with the spoken accent of presenters

As a solution to these challenges, the Africa Catalyst School will provide the following:

-    Outreach to the youth in tertiary institutions, workers and business owners to promote and raise awareness of Cardano and Catalyst;

-    Provide onboarding to new entrants through:

o Live and recorded localized sessions facilitated by Africans in English and French for a start and eventually in Arabic. The emphasis is on having Africans facilitate the sessions to eliminate the challenge of poor understanding due to differences in spoken accent.

• Prepared courses on all the topics currently handled by the main Catalyst School ie. Introduction to Cardano Blockchain and Catalyst, How to be a Community Advisor, How to be a Veteran Community Advisor, How to be a Voter etc.
• The Africa Catalyst School will provide additional courses as follows:

(a) How to navigate the Cardano.ideascale.com website

(b) Brainstorming and Q&A sessions – These sessions will aim at gathering and sharing ideas on challenges peculiar to Africa so participants can use them as a launchpad for writing future proposals.

(c)  How to turn an idea into an effective proposal on ideascale

Given the huge potential for the growth and expansion of Cardano and Catalyst in Africa, an Africa oriented Catalyst school will yield tremendous results.

Internet connectivity is the main challenge that could affect the successful delivery of this initiative. The target group, the youth, may find the cost of internet data expensive and may not fully participate as expected.

[FEASIBILITY]

Given the scope of work to be done we anticipate that the Africa Catalyst School may extend beyond one funding cycle. For the first 3-month cycle however, we will focus on the following:

Month 1: Conduct live sessions in English once a week:

The first week will be dedicated to localizing and adapting existing course materials to the African context as well as preparing content for new courses.

Week 2: Introduction to Blockchain, Cardano and Catalyst

Week 3: How to navigate the Cardano.ideascale.com website

Week 4: How to be a Community Advisor

These sessions will be conducted only in English and will not be uploaded on any social media channel because they will be the ‘guinea pig’ sessions which will be used to fine tune subsequent sessions. We intend to obtain relevant feedback from participants on whether the content of sessions have been localized enough for the African context, whether the sessions provide adequate information and guidance to participants for their smooth onboarding among others.

Month 1 will also be used to prepare for the French sessions which will be launched in the subsequent months. To prepare for these sessions, feedback from the English sessions will be captured and incorporated into content for the French sessions and content will be translated.

Month 2: Conduct live sessions once a week, with breakout rooms in English and French

The same topics handled during month 1 sessions will be repeated in month 2. These will

however be improved sessions because they will incorporate the feedback we received from the

earlier sessions. One live session will be conducted each week, with breakout rooms in English

and French. Courses for month 2 are:

Week 1: Introduction to Cardano Blockchain and Catalyst

Week 2: How to navigate the Cardano.ideascale.com website

Week 3: How to be a Community Advisor

Week 4: Brainstorming and Q&A session

These sessions will be uploaded on YouTube to help other new entrants

Month 3: Conduct the following live sessions once a week in English

Week 1: How to be a Veteran Community Advisor

Week 2: How to be a Voter

Week 3: Brainstorming and Q&A session

Week 4: How to turn an idea into an effective proposal on ideascale

The courses will go through a similar fine tuning process to improve on them and translate them into French for delivery in the next funding cycle.

We anticipate that a minimum of 25 people will participate in every session with numbers growing as the sessions progress.

• Localization and adaptation of existing course materials/preparation of materials for new courses for 6 topics in English - 18hours *16= $1,080
• Localization and adaptation of existing course materials/preparation of materials for new courses for 6 topics in French - 18 hours * 60 =$ 1,080
• Delivery of 11 live sessions in both English and French - 17 * 60 = $ 1,020
• Translation cost - $3,500
• Internet Cost - $1,500
•  Publicity & networking - $500
• Administrative Cost - $2,000

For the Africa Catalyst School to be a success there is a need for collaboration, hence a group of people from all over with the key aim for the success of Catalyst come together to get this going

Afia Owusu: Brings extensive experience in team leadership and community engagement/organization to WADA.

Felix Weber: enthusiast & community networker, T&M's elected representative for the 1st Catalyst Circle, co-founder of Catalyst Swarm, co-initiator & coordinator of the Eastern Hemisphere Town Hall, initiator of the Catalyst Alliance.

Victor Corcino: Veteran Community Advisor (vCA), Proposal Mentor, CAs' elected representative for the 1st Catalyst Circle, co-creator of the Community Tools (Proposer/CA/vCA/Voter Tools), Catalyst Swarm core member, engineering/science/developer and 'hands-on' teaching background

Daniel D. Lezu - Web Manager Wada is a Front End web developer. He holds Bachelors of Science in Information Technology from Bluecrest College and Professional Diploma in Software Engineering from IPMC Ghana. He is passionate about Cloud computing, Cyber Security and Decentralized Applications. He was a Community Advisor in Catalyst fund 7 and Catalyst Challenge Team Lead for ‘Scale-UP Cardano’s Community Hubs’ challenge settings for fund 8. He envisioned using Blockchain Technology to bridge the gap between human capabilities and machine learning (AI & IoT). Reach him on the following platforms:

Emelia Sarfo: Wada Volunteer, HR Practitioner, Entrepreneur, CA for Fund 6 and Fund 7, vCA for Fund7, Ideafest member, Challenge Team Member, active in Catalyst programs (Town Halls, Catalyst Swarm, CA Telegram)

Jeremiah Baani: College Tutor, IT practitioner, Blockchain/ Crypto educator and advocate, Wada Ghana team member, Voter since fund4, Community Advisor in fund7, Veteran Community Advisor in Fund7, Challenge Team member, Active in catalyst related programs etc.

Mohammed Mustapha Yakubu: Events Strategist, Blockchain Advocate, Lead for Wada Kumasi, Challenge Lead - Grow Africa, Grow Cardano.

Megann Hess: Cameroon Team Co-Lead, Central Africa Coordination Lead, Wada core team (Education and Event Lead), Math & Physics teacher, bilingual (French & English)

[AUDITABILITY]

The key indicators for measuring the progress of the project will be the number of courses

localized and/or developed, the number of live sessions held as per the proposal and the number

of participants recorded for every session.

In month 1, we expect that three courses will be localised and/or prepared, 3 live sessions will be

conducted with a minimum of 20 participants in attendance at each session.

In month 2, we anticipate that four live sessions will be conducted with English and French

breakout rooms and with a minimum of 25 candidates in attendance. Also, 3 additional courses

will be localized in English

In month 3 we expect to have four live sessions, all in English with a minimum of 30 participants.

Therefore, our milestones and success definition are:

• Learning content created for the School sessions and workshops.
• 20 School sessions and workshops hosted

Success metrics

We will track the success of this project by measuring the:

• Total number of community members who get involved with the Catalyst School.
• Number of proposers joining the sessions and workshops.
• Number of CAs joining the sessions and workshops.
• Number of vCAs joining the sessions and workshops.
• Number of 1-to-1 supports provided to community members.
• Number of new referees
• Number of new voters

No is a proposal aim to support the proposed Catalyst Africa Town Hall also in this fund 8

SDG Rating

4 - for quality Education and

17 - Partnership for the goals