Cross-Chain Catalyst Women Activity

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Catalyst Women is a space for learning, collaboration, and creation rooted in behaviors and intentions that support women as builders within Cardano. 

We have launched this project in January 2022 with the aim is to give women the confidence to take action and participate to their full potential within Catalyst, where they might otherwise have remained as an observer.

Why is this necessary?

When the subtle but powerful differences between males and females are celebrated and optimized in collaboration ecosystems thrive, empathy soars, personal development grows. Communication, confidence, leadership, and teamwork are maximized to their full potential.

People naturally draw confidence and cues about how they should behave from the culture of their environment. How they perceive themselves within the environment, how comfortable they feel to contribute, and how their ideas and inputs are received impact their desire to take action.

In any given environment, the minority group is on the backfoot when it comes to the culture of the space being aligned with their way of being. Unless however, the people in this environment are highly self-aware and have the ability to overcome inbuilt biases and overpowering behaviors. Or, the individual has a high degree of confidence and a strong ability to communicate to the dominant group. 

Less than 5% of Cardano are women.

When there are significantly fewer women in an environment, the unbalanced nature of that environment has shown to favor the male majority way of operating, and to miss beneficial approaches that are not considered. For many women, this means they are less likely to voice their opinions and ideas and less likely to be heard. 

So we created this inclusive space in the name of women, as an environment to allow everyone to be heard, to nurture new ideas, build trusted relationships, and provide pathways into Catalyst.

Carado Women is a testing and development ground for ideas and initiatives that, over time, will bring more balance to environments within Catalyst. We seek collaboration with everyone so that the people building within Cardano are able to contribute to their full potential, and are representative of the people of the world.

With the growing interest and the trusted community that we have created, another idea emerged - the weekly Women In Blockchain(WiB) meetings every Thursday.

Weekly Women in Blockchain Meetings

The Women of Blockchain is a group founded by members of Cardano Catalyst Women to help build awareness of Cardano and to help build an inclusive blockchain industry.

We believe that stronger collaboration comes from forging real connections, which is why Women of Blockchain currently provides weekly networking and collaborative space to women across chains.

Supporting an Inclusive Pipeline for Blockchain

Supportive professional groups are essential to building the pipeline of diversity in technology, including blockchain.

Project Catalyst’s inclusive environment is already helping Cardano lead the way for the blockchain industry to help meet UN SDG goals. And we want to help accelerate bringing the UN SDG goal of gender equality to fruition.

But why is an inclusive blockchain important? We can look to other examples to understand.

A World Economic Forum blog post cited the following examples of why inclusion in essential to technology:

• Early speech recognition software struggled to recognise women’s voices.
• Having been designed by and tested on men, when airbags were first introduced they disproportionately injured women and children.
• Apple released a health app that could keep track of a wide-ranging set of health metrics but initially failed to account for menstruation.

Supporting materials:

https://www.startupgrind.com/blog/women-in-business-why-we-all-need-a-support-group/

https://www.ellevatenetwork.com/articles/9336-a-fresh-look-at-a-long-standing-problem-using-blockchain-to-achieve-gender-equity

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/11/the-tech-industry-needs-more-women-heres-how-to-make-it-happen-d1eec473-48cc-4801-bd40-dfba040b0e4a/ 

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

Types of activities that we are already doing since the beginning of the year 2022:

1. After Town Hall meetings - speaker focused or featuring Catalyst community members - personal stories and projects. Every Wednesday at 5pm UTC. 
2. Weekly Women in Blockchain - general discussions for cross-chain collaboration and a safe space to ask the “unasked” questions. Every Thursday ay 6pm UTC. 
3. Social media management
4. Cross-chain speaker sourcing
5. PR activities

Alignment with Challenge KPIs:

• A group of people who has proved their consistent actions and willingness to make contributions to the ecosystem.
• Opening the doors to other communities can increase the number of Catalyst members and broaden their perspectives and knowhow.
• Learning from other open source communities 
• Increasing the brand awareness and bringing in curious developers from outside of the Cardano community.

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

Risk of not delivering: Speakers might postpone events because of busy schedule which could create a delay and mess in our agenda. In order to make sure that we always have a speaker, we should have secured a couple of speakers ahead.

Risk of not adopting: With the rise of the Cardano Catalyst community, the ATH rooms become more and there are many interesting events happening at the same time. In order to make sure we always have an audience, we should rely on effective communication and high quality content.

Risk of not reaching the desired outcome: There is a possibility that we might not be able to have different cross-chain speakers every month so in this case, we are featuring Cardano Catalyst community members in order to showcase the personal stories of the people building our community.

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

Roadmap and action plan

Actions done so far:

January 2022

• First ATH Meeting launched

February 2022

• 4 ATH Meetings
• Logo created
• Website launched
• Email launched

March 2022

• 5 ATH Meetings
• 2 WiB Private Meetings

April 2022

• 3 ATH Meetings
• 4 WiB Private Meetings
• Twitter account launched

May 2022

• 2 ATH Meetings
• 3 WiB Private Meetings

June 2022

• 2 ATH Meetings
• 2 WiB Private Meetings

In the next 6 months, we plan to continue our activites and to add more regular meetings. 

July 2022

• 2 ATH Meetings
• 2 WiB Private Meetings
• Hire 2 more event facilitators 
• Hire social manager

August 2022

• 2 ATH Meetings
• 2 WiB Private Meetings
• Reach out to speakers from other communities and secure at least 5 speakers

September 2022

• 4 ATH Meetings
• 4 WiB Private Meetings
• Social management - brand awareness

October 2022

• 4 ATH Meetings
• 4 WiB Private Meetings
• Social management - brand awareness

November 2022

• 4 ATH Meetings
• 4 WiB Private Meetings
• Social management - brand awareness

December 2022

• 4 ATH Meetings
• 4 WiB Private Meetings
• Social management - brand awareness

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Budget breakdown:

• 4 Meeting facilitators & Operations (2 co-host per meeting for enhanced experience and better discussions) x USD 500 = USD 2000/per month
• 1 Community & Social media x USD 500 = USD 500/per month

Total: USD 2 500 x 6 months = USD15 000 

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

Shirah Dedman - Meeting facilitator & operations

https://www.linkedin.com/in/shirahdedman/ 

• Over 2000 LinkedIn followers
• Licensed U.S. lawyer
• Graduate of the top-tiered University of Southern California Law School
• Graduate of the University of Arkansas Law School
• Graduate of Pepperdine University
• Over 15 years of project management experience
• Over 10 years of sales and marketing experience
• Over 5 years of experience organizing community education events

Megan Widney - community management 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/megan-widney-91a9a78/

• Dependable, responsible, excellent communicator and problem solver
• Quick learner with broad experience and education in many industries, including medicine, aviation, psychology, and foreign languages. 
• Highly ambitious, motivated, and eager to learn new information, or tasks. 
• Ability to extend and apply very broad-based knowledge in effective and creative ways. Good understanding of complex systems, systems safety and systems resilience.

Dzhuliana Nikolova - Meeting facilitator & operations

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dzhuliana-nikolova-b6805714a/ 

https://forum.cardano.org/t/ambassador-stories-journal-25-dzhuliana-nikolova-andreas-sosilo/101749/

• Cardano Ambassador and Challenge Team Lead in Fund8 & Fund9
• After Town Hall - “Cardano Catalyst Women” Room Host
• Co-founder, CTO at OneUpOneDown 7+ years experience in UX/UI design & product development
• 5+ years experience in software development
• 5+ years experience in self-development, education, and mentoring

Looking for:

• Meeting facilitator & operations #2
• Meeting facilitator & operations #3

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

If we are funded, we plan to continue with our activities in empowering diversity through relationship building, research, education, and mentorship in Cardano Catalyst ecosystem.

[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?

Monthly KPIs:

• 4 ATH Meetings for cross-chain speakers & featuring community members
• Minimum 1 cross-chain speaker per month
• 4 WiB Private Meetings for building trusted relationships
• 4 Social media posts for brand awareness

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

Success Metrics:

This project will be considered a success if we increase the number of Women in Blockchain: 

• members, and 
• weekly active attendance

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

New one

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

SDG Goals

4 - Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

5 - Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

SDG Subgoals

4.3 - By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university

4.5 - By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations

5.1 - End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere

5.5 - Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life

5.b - Enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

4.3.1 - Participation rate of youth and adults in formal and non-formal education and training in the previous 12 months, by sex

4.5.1 - Parity indices (female/male, rural/urban, bottom/top wealth quintile and others such as disability status, indigenous peoples and conflict-affected, as data become available) for all education indicators on this list that can be disaggregated

5.5.1 - Proportion of seats held by women in (a) national parliaments and (b) local governments

5.1.1 - Whether or not legal frameworks are in place to promote, enforce and monitor equality and non‑discrimination on the basis of sex

5.5.2 - Proportion of women in managerial positions

5.b.1 - Proportion of individuals who own a mobile telephone, by sex