Elevate Social Impacts via Cardano

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

In Vietnam, there is no government funding for social enterprises and they still have to pay tax as normal enterprises, hence, it is even more challenging for them to run their organisation. In addition, traditional funders would seek well-established NGOs or Social Enterprise to fund for. This is a real challenge for start-up social enterprises as they would have to seek seed funding in which most of the time would always be the burden on the shoulders of the founders. With such responsibilities, founders then can not concentrate on doing the strategy and operation for their social enterprises and therefore, prevent them from scaling up their models and elevating impacts.

Having experience working in established social enterprises and starting up my own social enterprise in Vietnam has given me the opportunities to learn that not many social enterprises have the same access to financial support or have the know-how to build their own due diligence documents to attract funding. On the other hand, many people wanted to donate to trusted and impactful social enterprises yet they are not encouraged to make contributions, mainly from lack of platforms that give them access to vetted social enterprises that they feel safe to give. As a result of this barrier, start-up social enterprises face challenges in attracting funds to execute their impactful initiatives and build a long term sustainable strategy for their business. In addition, ada holders/donors could not amplify their investment to make a difference. 

Believing in the power of community and social impacts, we passionately want to utilize our experience, knowledge, skills and open resources to help bring this gap closer, to elevate social impacts for a better future of our underserved communities. 

Many ada holders do not stake their ada in small stake pools, as a result, their investments are all in concentrated stake pools which is not aligned with the vision of Cardano where ownerships should be decentralized. Moreover, there are a lot of ada holders who would not know they could amplify their impacts simply by staking their ada. 

Our project will partner with Open ISPO- a funded project in F8 (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/403106), a service that helps nurture small pools, calculate and distribute tokens. We will engage ada holders/donors to stake their investment into small pools, host workshops to share with them about social impacts and how their investment could make a difference. 

Our beneficiaries would be start-up social enterprises in Vietnam that work in:

• Women economic empowerment to reduce gender-based violence issues
• Holistic education for street kids, at-risk and disadvantaged youth 
• Healing services for people experiencing mental health. 

We consider that these are the three vulnerable groups that need help the most, and they are even more affected by COVID-19. If we can give social enterprises who work to solve these problems more sustainable financial support, they would be able to scale up their model to create bigger impacts. Apart from financial support, we will work with social enterprises to help build reporting framework, due diligence such as: Child protection policies, Prevention of Sexual Allegations and Harrassemnt policies, Anti-corruption policy…etc. In addition, we will be delivering workshops about crypto currency, with a strong focus on Cardano, this way, our beneficiaries would gain more knowledge about this area and crypto currency would support their work and their beneficiaries. 

By doing this, every stakeholder of our project would achieve their goals: 

• For social enterprises, they would be able to have access to funding, strengthen their organizational capacity.
• For Ada holders/donors: They would learn more about social impacts, able to make a difference without contributing their own finance in the most transparent and flexible way compared to traditional charity giving. 
• For small pool owners, they would be able to attract more holders to stake in the pools
• For the Cardano ecosystem, they would be more sustainable with diversity with pools and holders and more people would learn about Cardano too.

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

Our innovative solution would offer all stakeholders a flexible and transparent platform and way of engagement between ada holders/donors and social enterprises (beneficiaries) to understand both sides and make the most of the donations.

Our holistic approach not only brings these two groups of people closers to create impacts, but also help strengthen organisaitonal capacity and capability of SEs. We believe that if we want to change anything in this world, it would come from education. We would train our social enterprise partners in building stronger system and policies and framework, this will allow them for long term funding opportunities. In addition, our project would help educate our ada holder/donors to have awareness about social issues, and that social responsibilities are part of what they do (in Vietnamese culture, the giving culture would always come from families and close relatives rather than a community), this is indeed important as they would pass this philosophy to the next generation of Vietnam. We believe by raising awareness of both these groups, the awareness of Cardano and cryptocurrency would be increased too.

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

• Market volatility affects holders' decisions to stake their ada

Educate holders on the nature of market and train them about the importance of long term investment instead of short term and how staking would help protect their properties. We will also help them see the vision of Cardano so they could trust the company more.

• Social enterprises do not have access to or understanding of blockchain/cryptocurrency knowledge.

We will deliver one workshop on basic blockchain/cryptocurrency to help social enterprises be able to participate in the program and use funds effectively.

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

Project roadmap:

October 2022

• Design marketing collaterals for both ada holders and social enterprises. These materials will be published on our website (cardano2vn.io). We will provide monthly reports on github (https://github.com/cardano2vn).
• Host 1 online workshop for Ada holders to introduce the project and its social impacts. 
• Design 1 application form for social enterprise with questions 

November 2022

• Host information sessions for social enterprises in Vietnam 
• Promote application
• Receive applications from social enterprises 
• Continue to engage ada holders to stake in small pools 

December 2022

• Host 2 workshops to help social enterprises with due diligence 
• Accessing applications for social enterprises to be beneficiaries 
• Deliver 2 workshop about cryptocurrency and Cardano ecosystem 

January 2023

• Announcing beneficiaries of the projects 
• Organize one meet-up online for ada holders and social enterprises (beneficiaries)
• Evaluating and Reporting project with Cardano 

KPIs

• Attract 50 social enterprises to join information session 
• Received 20 applications from social enterprises 
• Engaged 50 ada holders staking in small pools 
• 5 selected social enterprises will be given funds
• Helped 20 social enterprises learn how to build due diligence documents and reporting frameworks
• 90% participants from social enterprises understand the importance of structured system, report and due diligence
• 90% participants of ada holders understand about the social enterprises concept

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

• Labor to prepare contents for marketing collaterals: 3 days*8 hours = 24 hours 
• Labor to design collaterals: 4days*8 hours = 32 hours 
• Labor prepare contents for workshop for ada holders: 2 days*8 hours = 16 hours 
• Labor to prepare contents and design application for social enterprises: 5 days* 8 hours = 40 hours 
• Labor to host the first online workshop: ½ day = 4hours 
• Labor to review the first workshop and answers to any questions: 1 day*8 hours= 8 hours
• Labor to prepare contents for the information session for social enterprise: 1 day*8 hours = 8 hours 
• Labor to host the information session for social enterprises: ½ day*8 hours = 4 hours 
• Labor to host the information session for social enterprises: ½ day*8 hours = 4 hours 
• Labor to promote application for social enterprise: 10 days*8 hours = 80 hours 
• Labor to promote about the project to ada holders: 10 days*8 hours = 80 hours 
• Labor to collect applications from social enterprise: 2 days*8 hours = 16 hours
• Labor to prepare contents for 2 workshop for social enterprise with due diligence and report: 3days*8hours = 24 hours 
• Labor to host the two workshops: 2days *8 hours = 16 hours 
• Labor for Q&A for ada holders and social enterprises: 2days*8 hours = 16 hours 
• Labor accessing applications for social enterprises to be beneficiaries: 5days*8 hours = 40 hours
• Labor to prepare contents for 2 workshops for social enterprise about cryptocurrency and Cardano Ecosystem: 4days*8hours = 32 hours 
• Weekly meeting = 50 hours 
• Labor to review all the workshops after hosting them: 3days*8 hours = 24hours 
• Labor to prepare for announcing beneficiaries: 2days*8hours = 16 hours
• Labor to organise one meet-up online for ada: 2days*8 hours = 16 hours 
• Labor to do evaluation and report of the project: 7days*8 hours = 56 hours 

Total hours: 610*50$/hour = $30500

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

• Tien Nguyen Anh :
• + Founder of the VILAI stake pool, computer science experts, working in the Cardano/Crypto space since 2018.
• + Deploying many payment systems for major banks, financial institutions, and telecommunications in Vietnam
• + Eastern Townhall co-host
• + LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tienna/
• + Twitter: https://twitter.com/tiennganh
• + Email: tienna@gmail.com
• + Telegram: t.me/tiennguyenanh
•  + Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tiennguyena
• Huong Dang Thi - Founder & CEO of HopeBox, Grant and Fundraising Expert, Marketing and Communication specialist, Strategic Advisors to social enterprises
• Experience in her regular career: Wrote proposals and secured funding from Australian government for KOTO with project up-to AUD1,020,000, secured annual budgets of $1.5Mil for KOTO Social Enterprise, worked with big corporate like Experian, Adobe etc for CSR funding projects, and with public sector like Australian, Dutch, Canadian, New Zealand' governments on partnership and funding. Manager and implement a $700,000 project called HER TURN: Women Economic Empowerment Project 2018-2021 - a joint project between KOTO, Australian Government, the Lorinet Foundation and EMpower Foundation.
• The aspect of the proposal's work will undertake: Over project management.
• Linkedln: https://www.linkedin.com/in/huong-dang-63947620/
• Experience in the Cardano blockchain: Learned about Cardano for over 3 years, A holder of ada and staked in Vilai Pool. An activist of Cardano to wider community in Vietnam.
• Nguyen Khanh Linh - Project Manager at HopeBox Social Company Limited
• Linkedln:https://www.linkedin.com/in/linh-nguyen-0a8b3916b/?fbclid=IwAR18h8dLkONNoKW_y-2t_QaGZtoBxZiL1A_1P3hoTdb74wotAvIpP8jF5YM
• The aspect of the proposal's work will undertake: Administration and contents developments
• Experience in the Cardano blockchain: A holder who owns nearly 2,000 Ada

[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 definitely will return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding. The main reason being is to scale up our impact by expanding this project further and bringing more ada holders and social enterprise together to create bigger impacts. However, we would consider carefully after evaluating this project once it done. We still return nonetheless as we have many other ideas to tackle the challenges

[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?

Our project will be measured and assessed by PA/Voters and community can be able to track on our project via our github (https://github.com/cardano2vn) as all of marketing materials will be updated on this space as well as they can follow our facebook group that has ada holders and social enterprises community so we can keep them posted on all the events we are hosting with proof of photos and such.

The tentative progress would be as follow:

1 Month

• Design marketing collaterals for both ada holders and social enterprises. These materials will be published on our website (cardano2vn.io). We will provide monthly reports on github (https://github.com/cardano2vn).
• Host 1 online workshop for Ada holders to introduce the project and its social impacts. 
• Design 1 application form for social enterprise with questions 

3 months

• Host information sessions for social enterprises in Vietnam 
• Promote application
• Receive applications from social enterprises 
• Continue to engage ada holders to stake in small pools 
• Host 2 workshops to help social enterprises with due diligence 
• Accessing applications for social enterprises to be beneficiaries 
• Deliver 2 workshop about cryptocurrency and Cardano ecosystem 

4 months

• Announcing beneficiaries of the projects 
• Organize one meet-up online for ada holders and social enterprises (beneficiaries)
• Evaluating and Reporting project with Cardano 

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

By the end of the project, we expect the following results:

• Social enterprises will have access to potential funds, allowing them to receive financial support and continue with their initiative ideas, while also improving their capacity and structuring their business model, allowing them to easily access new funds in the future.
• People who want to donate to impactful social enterprises have a trusted platform for donating and investing.
• The underrepresented group and the community, in general, will have a better understanding of technology, Cardano community, and what Cardano is doing to improve society.
• Cardano community will be more stabilized as a result of an enormous amount of staked Ada from the holder.
• Social enterprises will be engaged with each other, creating a strong network of Social enterprise communities in Vietnam to help each other.

[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 a totally new project

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

SDG 1. No poverty

SDG 3. Good health and well-being: Ensure healthy live and promote well-being for all at all ages.

SDG 4. Quality Education 

SDG 5. Gender Equality: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.

SDG 8. Decent Work and Economic Growth

By focusing on the SEs working on women's economic empowerment, holistic education for street kids/at-risk and disadvantaged youth, and healing services for people experiencing mental health issues, we believe that we will be able to contribute to the achievement of four UN sustainable development goals including No poverty; Quality education; Good health and well-being; Gender Equality, and achieving goal 8 by building a donating platform for social enterprises, allowing them to access funds and scale up their business, therefore stimulating economic growth and creating jobs for many people.