Auditing African Proposals, By Wada

[IMPACT]

Main deliverable:

An extended, 3-month audit program with the aim of providing visibility and insights into funded African proposals for the Catalyst community. The audits are then to be shared with the Catalyst community through the 'Wada Showcase' website and the Wada YouTube channel.

Project Brief:

Wada Showcase (WS) will profile various funded proposals from Project Catalyst through reporting, documentation, articles, interviews and live demos. These proposals will be Africa focused, either by location or by user base. The members of the WS team will be known as ‘Wada Oracles’, individuals who are trusted by Wada and the Cardano community to vet projects, keep up to date with their progress and report back in a timely and informative manner.

The main objectives for this audit program are:

1. Creating a document standard for reporting bi-weekly on project progress.
2. Identify the key success factors of projects that are on-track.
3. Identify the core reasons projects go off-track and what we can do to limit this.
4. Establishing a good relationship with funded projects and being the service of choice to release news, updates and live demos to the community.

We are currently a 5-member team with over 15 funded African proposals under audit. The aim of this proposal is to extend our capacity by 3x, with the goal of 15 team members auditing more than 45 funded proposals.

Future Use Cases:

A fast-approaching goal will be to have audited every funded African proposal on Catalyst. Beyond that, three pathways for continued audit engagements are:

• Begin auditing African proposals at the pre-funding stage, to help voters in their decision-making.
• Extend audits to the community hubs challenge.
• Extend audits to the outreach and education challenges.

Tooling and Methodology:

• Audits will be augmented by use of the Audit360 tool developed by Edify UK, an impact-focused business acceleration consultancy.
• Collaboration with Vanessa Cardui (QA-DAO) for Qualitative Audit Assessment guidelines.
• Partnership with ADA Sustainability for the SDG Audit toolkit.

Challenge KPIs (Impact):

• Proposals under audit - (Very High)
• Relevance to a specific challenge - (Very High)
• Number of report and articles - High
• Number of videos and podcasts - Medium

The project directly addresses the challenge need by focusing on projects that currently have a low visibility and community understanding of implementation process.

Risk Management:

Auditing standards: WADA will oversee the program and create documentation around auditing standards for the initial group to follow. After the program is successfully concluded, a program audit will take place, best practices from the program will be identified and incorporated into a guidebook. We are also supported by several partners with decades of experience in auditing methodologies.

Auditors' commitment: By having an application process, we will only select those who have a demonstrated commitment to completing the program, as well as tying incentives to the completion of the audits, within the timeframe given.

Quality of content: Similarly, by our application process, but also by limiting the number of proposals under audit for each hire and applying a bi-monthly cadence to the reporting times, we can ensure a high quality of output across individuals.

[FEASIBILITY]

Roadmap: (After successful funding)

First 30 Days:

• Open applications for the 10 additional slots on the audit team.
• Identify new auditing tools to be used for this program and create training programs for the team.
• Research and design of auditing platform to be used by the team for easier reporting and communication.

3 months:

• Key hires recruited and trained.
• Audit program launched.
• Website updated with new team member profiles.

6 months: 

• Audit program concluded.
• Feedback gathered through survey and post-audit team sessions.

9 months:

• Review of audit program and team performance.
• Extended program proposal for additional challenges and/or pre-funding audits.

Main deliverable and outcome:

A 3-month audit program of funded Africa-based or Africa-focused Catalyst proposals. Outcomes will be shared on the Wada Showcase website and the Wada Youtube channel.

Budget

• Team fees: Project management and team coordination. $6000
• Auditing team: Headcount of up to 15 auditors, with at least 3 funded proposals each under audit. $15000
• Website & Marketing: A proposal search function added to the Wada showcase website. $2000
• Platform costs: 3rd-party tools and subscriptions used by the audit team (6 months). $3000
• Developer fees: Design and development of an internal portal used by the team to track audits, post reports and upload videos. $5000
• Auditing toolkits: Licensing and use of IP for the audit team. $3000
• Partnership costs: Training and audit advisory. $4000

Total: $38000

(Note that there is a 200% increase in committed output, and only a 50% increase in costs. The larger the team and the better the tools, the lower the cost per audit will be.)

A developer will be on hand to assist us in building a platform for the team to use that will serve as both an education portal and an audit tracker. The audit partners we have will also provide consultation on methods of scaling audits in a cost-efficient matter.

Our audit team are made up of students being trained with a number of audit tools and frameworks, which allows us to keep costs low, while maintaining a high standard of output.

Core team & roles:

Wada Team:

Josh F - Global Lead @ Wada

Ex-KPMG consultant, security-audit trained for investment banks and global payment processors. Funded proposer and challenge setter, active Catalyst member since Fund 2, stakepool operator and Catalyst conference host.

 https://linkedin.com/in/joshfielding

Mercy A - Coordination lead @ Wada

Has a combined 25+ years' experience in Project Management and Engagement (West Africa, Canada) Healthcare (UK, Canada) and brings a wealth of experience and passion to this project. Mercy is responsible for WADA coordination, and building partnerships.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mercy-tachie-menson-77b10931/

Afia Owusu - Project Lead + Regional Manager @ Wada

Holds an MSc degree in Management Information Systems from the University of Lancaster, UK and a BSc. (Hons) in Natural Resources Management, University of Science and Technology (UST), Kumasi, Ghana. She coordinated the Project Wildlife Clubs of African implemented by Birdlife International involving 17 African countries with the major output being information exchange between African Wildlife Clubs and their international counterparts through development of an electronic manual for the mainstreaming of environmental education for participating countries.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/afia-asamoa-04911816/

Wada Oracles (Pilot team):

• Safo Kwesi
• Awura Owusu
• Student at University of Ghana Business School studying Bachelor of Science in Administration, majoring in Accounting. Active community member for Cardano Community (Town Halls, CA Telegram). Community Advisor since Fund 6, Veteran Community Advisor in Fund 7 and Catalyst Challenge Team Member for ‘Grow Africa, Grow Cardano’ challenge settings for fund 8. Twitter: @awura_asamo
• Richmond Sabah
• Nathaniel Dwamena
• Angela Nartey

Main Stakeholder: Wada (https://wada.org)

Relevant Partners:

• Edify UK (https://www.edifybusiness.co.uk/)
• QA-DAO (https://quality-assurance-dao.github.io)
• ADA Sustainability (https://www.sustainableada.com)

Introductory article to the project and team members: Article

[AUDITABILITY]

Key Metrics:

• No. Proposals under audit
• No. Articles written
• No Reports delivered
• No. Video created
• No. Auditors in the program
• % Auditors completing the program
• % Audits completed 
• % Audits completed within the timeline
• % Audit completed with high accuracy (Rated by 'audit of the auditors' done by the Wada team)
• Auditor approval rating of the program

What success looks like:

By the end of the program, the extended WO team will have audited all F3-F7 funded African projects to a high standard, with 150+ unique pieces of content created.

*3 months*: Auditors hired, projects identified and allocated, platform developed, with 45+ projects under audit.

*6 months*: All audits are completed and reviewed within the timeline at a 90% accuracy rating (ie. No audit submissions for the wrong projects, or duplicates)

This proposal is a continuation of the pilot program outlined in the Fund 6 proposal. link

Affiliated Proposals:

Grow Wada, Grow Cardano:

• https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/396574

Wada Qualitative Audit:

• https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/402487

Past Proposals:

Scale up WADA's Outreach Program:

• https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Scale-up-WADA-s-Outreach-Program/366982-48088

Planting Roots in Africa:

• https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Planting-Roots-in-Africa/366767-48088

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Interested in contributing or partnering? Get in touch today by contacting team@wada.org