Building resilient youth

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

This proposal aims to build resilience through a youth empowerment mentoring program, “Be One”. This project will focus on developing a peer-to-peer coaching and mentoring program to provide support to youth leaders, particularly in Africa and the Global South who may face "eco-anxiety" and need the tools, advice, tips, and connections to build personal resilience. 

In partnership with Cardano leaders, Heads of State, Ministers, CEOs, and activists youth will be able to learn from these diverse leaders who are at the top of their field. Together, innovative solutions to the challenges that Africa and the Global South face will be discussed.

Critically, the selection of global leaders will be mentoring and providing support for people youth who are passionate about pursuing a path in the relevant fields. This will be a global platform for Cardano to mentor young crypto enthusiasts regarding blockchain and impact investing. COP27 is in Africa and therefore Africa will center many of the conversations. The future of crypto, Cardano, and Africa will be discussed as well as focus on how to foster a more resilient and sustainable relationship with climate investing.  

The SCC community will work with a large network of orgnaisations including Youth4Nature, the Climate Youth Negotiators, and the Real Food Systems Youth Ambassadors, as well as students enrolled in environmental programs at the University of Geneva, the SDG Lab, and the Graduate Institute in Geneva. We have already received a special Award from the 40by50 network and are looking for new partners to grow the portfolio.

This proposal aims to be a transparent, collaborative, and supportive launching pad and community gathering for positive, diverse climate solutions. The team has already started interacting with the Cardano community such as Yoram Ben-Zvi, Dzhuliana Nikolova, and Mercy A. Fordwoo.

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

Impact funding needs to be more inclusive. Beyond currency, mentorship is a tool that can catalyst entrepreneurship, leadership, and innovation. With the combination of catalyst funding and the SCC network meaningful and sustained relationships can be built. Investing in this mentorship program would encourage strategies and focus to be African centered. 

This will allow for the cross-pollination of ideas, support, and strategy building. SCC is already building relationships with Heads of State, Ministers, CEOs, and thought leaders. COnencitng the growing number of youth searching for guidance will propel projects forward. Cardano could be at the center of this global solution-building initiative. 

This proposal will contribute and is aligned with the following Challenge 9 KPIs:

Local partnerships formed (size of institution + influence)

Number of new African projects seeded in 2022

Number of African developers onboarded in 2022

And will indirectly contribute to the following Challenge KPIs:

Number of new Africa-based Catalyst members (proposers, voters, CAs)

Number of proposals addressing the fundamental issues preventing Cardano adoption in Africa 

Number of proposals offering solutions to infrastructure and education concerns

Local impact (measurable through user activity and reach)

[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: The team is already working on finding the most suitable platform for this kind of global networking. However, there are always risks. To mitigate these, we are working across sectors and skill sets. SCC has partnered with leaders in their fields of micro-credits, tech, impact-investing, and relationship building. 

Risk of not adopting: There is a risk that people will not be interested in mentoring youth. To mitigate this we are building relationships with leaders in their field on the understanding that they would be interested in being a global mentor. Additionally, we will produce a formalized plan, promotion activities, and a registration process to access interested. 

Risk of not reaching the desired outcome: The outcome is to build inclusive, diverse relationships that will create a network of supportive, innovative climate solutions. An indirect product of this as addressed in the KPIs is the potential for a number of new initiatives onboarded through our African partners. The process of the proposal will determine the outcome.

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

Planning - 6 months - for relationship building and strategy implementation to help mentor resilient growth. 

June: 

• Building and nurturing the community, strategic partners meeting, and building a relationship with youth leaders. 
• Continue to build relationships with the Cardano community and select speakers from Cardano. 
• Developing and maintaining a high-trust relationship with the COP27 Presidency team and High-Level Climate Champions. 
• Setting up the Friends of the Champions Group with 7 outstanding leaders from the MENA region. 

July/ August: 

• Developing the fully-fledged concept note, agenda, and final list of partners and mentors for the Summit, engaging and growing the community of partners, and developing media partnerships. 

September:

• Intensifying the policy and advocacy work with the COP27 Presidency while increasing the level of public pressure with the open letter and cooperation with the Avaaz online community

October: 

• Boosting the outreach through media and social media outreach, starting to communicate about confirmed high-level speakers for the Summit. 

November: 

• COP27 and Women Leaders Climate Summit. The event is on the 8th of November and will run for 24 hours. 

December/ January: 

• Collecting feedback, lessons learned, and key statistics to measure impact and prepare monitoring and evaluation report, prepare for COP28 phase already. 

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Community-building long-run effort: 11,000

• Stakeholder mapping -1,500
• One-to-one engagement - 1,500
• Collective meetings facilitation - 2,000
• Admin and Staff time support for 4 months 
•  4,000 (1000 / month)
• 60 hrs/ month 

Summit team preparation: 14,000

• Staff time for 4 months - 4,000 (1000/month)
• Media and social media outreach and advertisement - 1,500
• Network IT infrastructures, database maintenance - 2,000
• Branding and public-facing messaging - 1,500
• Marketing and advertising - 1,500
• Short video “trailer type” announcement - 1,500
• VIP Speakers fees - 2,000

Summit coverage with IT support and facilitation: 2,000

Feedback, monitoring impact, and reporting, financial management: 2,000

Total budget: 29,000

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

Antoinette Vermilye

Co-Founder SHE Changes Climate and the Gallifrey Foundation and an International Gender Champion. Antoinette is passionate about the complex interrelationships of the ocean, plastics, gender, climate change, and overfishing on social injustice, human health, and the environment. She seeks coalitions to find action-oriented solutions that will have far-reaching impacts downstream or to take action on identified gaps where little or no attention is paid. Antoinette has been involved in tangential legal actions to shift paradigm thinking and create action/reaction scenarios, consumer and education awareness-raising on social injustice, and human health and environmental impacts and also working behind the scenes to affect discreet levers of change.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinette-vermilye-she-her-065a67167/ 

Bianca Pitt

Co-Founder of SHE Changes Climate and the Founder of the Women of the Environment Network. She is an advisor to the environmental charity sector, an activist and campaigner, and an environmental funder. She also serves on a number of boards and advisory committees. She is a Fellow of the RSA and TEDx speaker.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bianca-pitt-a951251/ 

Elise Buckle

Co-Founder of SHE Changes Climate and President of Climate & Sustainability, a platform of collaboration for change-makers focusing on partnership for climate, people, and nature. Elise Buckle has been working in the field of climate and sustainability for 20 years. She has worked as a United Nations special advisor to several high-level diplomats and led several successful global and political campaigns at the EU Parliament, in Africa, Central Asia, and Latin America. She builds and develops broad coalitions of diverse stakeholders from governments, businesses, NGOs, unions, and health organizations aligned on the same collective goal, working together through a process of radical collaboration, as One Team for One Planet, nurturing an ecosystem of actors dedicated to a systemic transformation of society. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elise-buckle/ 

The Co-Founders are supported by a group of highly professional individuals who work across the tech industry, justice, and social media space, and share a deep passion for climate action, diversity, and inclusiveness. 

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

Yes, as we will continue our work for other COPs in the following year, scaling up our work and convening another Summit for COP28 in 2023. We are also preparing other proposals for connecting the network of networks, for a mentoring programme and for catalyzing finance for women entrepreneurs in Africa.

[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?

Deliverables:

• Youth connected with leaders in relevant fields 
• Networking sessions 
• Marketing materials including Cardano
• Mentors and youth to participate in SCC events and get exposure to Cardano
• Marketing posts and Media 
• Media kit re Cardano

The event is public and the community has high visibility of the results. 

Key Metrics:

• Over 154 million reach across platforms
• In an event last year we received a vast about of media coverage from The BBC (Newsnight, Women’s Hour), FT, Forbes, Vogue, Marie-Claire, and many other global media outlets. This year we will build the same connections and much more. 
• Local impact (measurable through user activity and reach)
• Local partnerships formed (size of institution + influence)

We expect a big interest in Cardano as well as establish connections to discuss high-level collaborations. 

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

The success of this project would be a strong network of mentors across Cardano, Heads of State, Ministers, CEOs, and activists. This network will provide sustainable and diverse mentorship for youth in the relevant fields. Success would mean that youth leaders are guided with tools to help them navigate the complexity of climate change, negotiations, and a global commons. 

The success of the proposal would be in line directly and indirectly with Challenge 9 KPIs. The hope is that the relationships will encourage local action, impact, and partnership as well as international knowledge sharing. With COP27 in Africa, a central focus will be sustainably from an African perspective as well as the role of technology and blockchain as the future of sustainable finance. 

With the support from Cardano, this high-profile network will also platform the work that Cardano is doing and the interconnection between sustainability, inclusivity, and blockchain. 

[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 5 - gender equality

SDG 13 - climate action

SDG 17- partnership for all goals

SDG 1-end poverty

SDG 4- quality education