Create a dReps' Equity Resource Hub

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem.

Develop Equity Resource Hub to empower dReps & Catalyst members with knowledge on topics of bias and equity; to provide tools, activities, and resources to grow one’s awareness of cognitive fallacies.

[GENERAL] Summarize your relevant experience.

DEI and Talent Retention Specialists with a combined 17 years of experience in guiding organizations towards inclusive, healthy cultures. Experts in scaling startup ecosystems within remote & diverse organizations. Supported by a diverse team of AI and Blockchain-funded founders.

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

In order to reduce our natural preferences towards or against something or someone, we suggest building an Equity Resource Hub for dReps and the community that establishes awareness and guidance to fairly and effectively collaborate within a diverse community to serve a diverse community. The goal of the Equity Resource Hub will be to educate members of Catalyst on the topics of bias and equity; and to provide additional tools, activities, and resources to grow one’s knowledge of cognitive fallacies. This resource reservoir will include on-demand workshops, virtual training & resources that empower all members to participate in reducing unintentional harm across the community. 

We know that traditional bias training does not work, and in fact, can be detrimental to morale and improving the diversity of the community. With this in mind, we will provide materials on the foundational components of bias, and take it a step further with action. The Equity Resource Hub will encourage participants to take the Harvard Implicit Association Test to demonstrate that we all fall prey to unconscious bias to a degree and provide feedback on their personal level of bias. With this information, we can implore members with the exercises needed to take power over unconscious programming and create deeper empathy. Finally, we’ll provide members with a platform to share and reflect on unique experiences to practice and reinforce the lessons learned. 

Note: an element of this solution will include the marketing and promotion of the materials and resources available to improve equity and belonging within the Catalyst community. 

The Equity Resource Hub will be available (at-will) for the community and could be encouraged for elected dReps to complete to serve their diverse constituents adequately. Additionally, we plan to generate a Verified cNFT and DID Verified Credential that people can display as a badge and certification of completion.

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

Decades of study into these topics have revealed best practices for improvement in equity & bias, which informed our programming in this proposal.

Addressing one’s bias, cognitive fallacies, or any other known prejudice is quite simple - you must do it head-on. Through access to these training resources, we provide dReps and Catalyst voters with the tools, safety, and support to learn at their own pace. As an outcome, members can expect to gain an understanding of their own biases, learn how to recognize and combat those biases, and develop personal best practices to mitigate inequity moving forward. Additionally, in the spirit of social accountability, members may expect dReps to vote on behalf of others to complete these learnings.

Not only will we provide the knowledge and tools, but we will also support anyone interested in engaging in the sensitive nature of these topics as they step into their learning with guided sessions and office hours led by thought leaders in the space.

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

If there’s pushback on the content

• Actively consult the community via voting
• Provide additional research and data that support these efforts

If other factors cause us to delay in developing resources

• Crowdsourcing backup content creators and providers of this content 

If no one participates

• Intentionally crafted communications campaign to boost interest
• Promoting Exclusive Verified cNFT badges
• Hosting Equity Resource Hub After Town Halls
• Partner with SWARM on organizing Equity Resource Hub activities
• Listening tour to learn more about the community

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

Phase 1: Laying the foundation for the curriculum (timeline: 6-8 weeks)

• Understanding the current lay of the land regarding equity via surveys & interviews 
• Set curriculum
• Find content creators and determine additional modalities for content and consumption of content (e.g. videographers, closed-captioning providers, e.g.)
• Product plan & architecting platform
• Defining metrics for success

Phase 2: Content Creation & Platform Development (timeline: 3-4 months)

• Record and edit video/audio content
• Development of workbooks, workshops & training
• Develop bounties with the Snapbrillia team for benchmarking, testing knowledge, and Verified cNFT badge creation
• Post content and bounties to the Snapbrillia platform

Phase 3: Launch product (timeline: 2-3 weeks)

• Communications playbook to launch & encourage use
• Go-live on the Snapbrillia platform
• Scheduled programming: workshops, training, office hours

Phase 4: Feedback (timeline: 1-2 months)

• Feedback surveys
• Iterative improvements
• Posting additions to the curriculum

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Total: $25,000.00

• Content Creation: $15,000.00
• Engineering & Bounty Product Cost: Donated by Snapbrillia
• Audio/Video editing:
• 100 hours of editing @ $50.00/hour = $5000.00
• Additional equity/unconscious bias experts:
• 20 hours of consultation @ $200.00/hour = $4,000.00 
• Miscellaneous tools: $1000.00

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

Kristin Bonds is the Founder of Heristic, Inclusion Builder, and Recruiter. She is also a culture-builder & cheerleader with contagious enthusiasm. A graduate of The University of Texas at Austin who specializes in building world-class technical recruiting functions and inclusive teams, she is passionate about building inclusion into the bones of any organization so that all members can thrive in any space they choose to occupy. Her key focus areas are Talent Strategy, Recruitment Branding, Workplace Harmony, Education & Training Curriculum Development, and balancing irrational humans and thorough processes to achieve that sweet spot in organizational talent efficiency. Reach Kristin on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/kristin-bonds-b2956120/

Mercedes Ballard is the Founder and Talent Strategy Advisor at Heristic. She is a professional networker who has developed unique access to many diverse talent pools and resources for employee development. As a woman of color who has built a community in the workplace throughout her career, she is passionate about helping other companies build holistic and fun organizational cultures. Mercedes has gained ample and diverse experience in talent acquisition as an in-house and agency partner, which has demonstrated many of the inefficiencies and challenges of developing talent throughout the employee lifecycle. Today, she uses this experience and passion to uplift high-growth tech companies and creates efficient recruiting and onboarding flows, diversity and inclusion programming, and employee development programming. Reach Mercedes on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/mercedes-ballard-6a854456/

Frank Albanese is the Chief Scientist and Co-founder at Snapbrillia and Y Combinator alumni. He is a Solidity, Rust, and Haskell researcher, Henry Ford Health System alum, and Co-founder of the Ucratic DAO, an organization founded to accelerate the innovation of interoperable Open Metaverse tools, to allow anyone to design, mint, transport, and own virtual space and avatar across multiple Metaverse ecosystems like Cryptovoxels, The Sandbox, Dreams, and Decentraland. Ucratic DAO combined Three.js with web3.js and Hardhat to mint composable ERC-721 NFTs of 3D models in virtual spaces to Polygon and IPFS. With Ucratic, Frank also helped research ways to bring self-hosted virtual spaces to the Internet Computer and Dfinity canisters. Frank admires Gitcoin’s utility in the Web3 space and feels this architecture could thrive in Cardano’s ecosystem along with an eLearning and immutable, composable Practical Resume standard that serves as Proof of Reputation. Frank is also interested in the applicability of zero-knowledge proofs, and their potential role in Proof of Reputation and Proof of Identity solutions. Reach Frank on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-albanese-a8b17885

James Willingham is the CIO and Co-founder of Snapbrillia and TechStars alumni. James brings his vast expertise in UX/UI design and full-stack development to the team. He is a seasoned leader in the startup space working within multiple industries ranging from FinTech, where he designed and built the first true peer-to-peer lending platform on both iOS and Android in hopes to minimize the predatory pay-day loan cycle. In Healthcare, he designed and built a platform that allows doctors, patients, caregivers, and researchers to easily collaborate and work toward better health outcomes for everyone. James thrives on the mission of helping others get the help they need when they need it, life can be hard and challenging so he works to make them easier and more positive for everyone. Reach James on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-willingham-3704b824

Beatrice Thelisma is the CTO and Co-founder at Snapbrillia and TechFuturesGroup alumni. Beatrice has an amazing knack for leading engineering teams to execute web applications whether back-end, front-end, or DevOps. She has vast experience with nonprofits empowering women and children with critical survival funds and education for financial literacy. She is passionate about accelerating diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace and empowering and promoting the social, economic, and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion, economic, or another status. Reach Beatrice on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thelisma

Ninh Tran is the CEO and Co-founder of Snapbrillia and Google alumni. Ninh brings his expertise in product management, business development, and startup execution. As UC Berkeley alumni, Ninh founded Trucksome to empower emerging local food economies to thrive and create jobs for the previously incarcerated. After joining Google, Ninh co-founded an executive search firm HireTeamMate placing hundreds in a year while building HireEZ (formerly Hiretual), an AI recruiting platform used by Google, Facebook, Amazon, and thousands of others, to hire millions of people every year. Reach Ninh anywhere: https://www.linktr.ee/ninhtran

Other members of our Dev team:

Cuong Tran - 10+ years Back-End Developer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trquoccuong

Four Tran - 10+ years Full-Stack Developer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/four-tran-59b02310b

Tasos Valtinos - PPP Grad, 10+ Years Full-Stack Developer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tasos-v-24572b112

Curtis Myers - PPP Grad, 10+ years DevOps & IT: https://www.linkedin.com/in/curtis-myers-1798239/

Andy Sizer - 40+ years Functional Programming & DevOps: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-sizer-455467

Kevin Onalo - 10+ years Full-Stack Developer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-baraza-onalo-24712018

Thanh Hoang - 5+ years Full-Stack Developer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thanhth85

80+ more: https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?keywords=snapbrillia

We are fellow humans. :) Check our team pictures: https://www.snapbrillia.com/about

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

We are confident that the Equity Resource Hub resources will be well-received. This creates the foundation for a much more comprehensive DEI educational resource for Catalyst. If this is a huge success, especially when combined with delegation incentives for dReps by voters, we may ask for funding to expand the platform.

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

We measure progress daily based on:

• Proposal Progress vs. Deliverable Deadline
• Outstanding Tasks/Points
• Completed Tasks/Points
• Beta Release & Launch
• Outstanding Blockers

Transparency and community involvement:

• We host an Equity Resouce Hub After Town Halls at least once to twice a month to let the community get involved and provide feedback on our progress until the proposal closes out.
• We join almost every Catalyst Town Hall where the community can get involved and provide feedback on our progress until the proposal closes out.
• We work closely with other partner teams such as Snapbrillia and SWARM to provide updates to the community.
• You may also see us working and huddling in voice channels on Snapbrillia's Discord server: https://discord.gg/vJuPXu86vS

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

The goal of any workshop or training is to shed light on the bias to influence the reduction of harm to those traditionally marginalized by bias. We will know we have succeeded in furthering these efforts when a significant % of the Catalyst voting population is more informed and more comfortable combating bias in their daily interactions with a diverse membership. 

Metrics of success: 

• 20% of active users have engaged with the Equity Resource Hub
• Storytelling: More people are open to sharing their experiences
• Instances of conversation around equity are on the rise

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

This is an entirely new proposal, however, it is very loosely connected with OpenSource Quadratic Voting Funding because they both touch governance, voting, and voting power disparity: https://www.lidonation.com/en/proposals/opensource-quadratic-voting-funding

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

Goal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries

Goal 9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization, and foster innovation

SDG subgoals:

• 10.2 By 2030, empower and promote the social, economic, and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion, or economic or status
• 10.3 Ensure equal opportunity and reduce inequalities of outcome, including by eliminating discriminatory laws, policies, and practices and promoting appropriate legislation, policies, and action in this regard
• 10.4 Adopt policies, especially fiscal, wage, and social protection policies, and progressively achieve greater equality
• 10.6 Ensure enhanced representation and voice for developing countries in decision-making in global international economic and financial institutions in order to deliver more effective, credible, accountable, and legitimate institutions
• 9.5 Enhance scientific research, upgrade the technological capabilities of industrial sectors in all countries, in particular developing countries, including, by 2030, encouraging innovation and substantially increasing the number of research and development workers per 1 million people and public and private research and development spending
• 9.a Facilitate sustainable and resilient infrastructure development in developing countries through enhanced financial, technological, and technical support to African countries, least developed countries, landlocked developing countries, and small island developing States
• 9.b Support domestic technology development, research, and innovation in developing countries, including by ensuring a conducive policy environment for, inter alia, industrial diversification and value addition to commodities
• 9.c Significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in the least developed countries by 2020

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

• 10.3.1 Proportion of population reporting having personally felt discriminated against or harassed in the previous 12 months on the basis of a ground of discrimination prohibited under international human rights law
• 10.6.1 Proportion of members and voting rights of developing countries in international organizations
• 9.b.1 Proportion of medium and high-tech industry value added in total value-added
• 9.a.1 Total official international support (official development assistance plus other official flows) to infrastructure