The Future is Participative; First Digital then Blockchain

By Carol Andrade, +SocialGood Advisor, Social Good Brasil Co-founder and Executive-Director

September was as very special month for social good worldwide; including with Social Good Brasil and at United Nations General Assembly week.

Here in Brazil, we organized our 7th Social Good Brazil Festival. The Festival featured the amazing keynotes speakers Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimmans, who launched their book, New Power, for the first time in Portuguese. We also launched our 3rd fellowship cohort training and our 1st Data for Good Laboratory cohort for social investors. In New York, I had the opportunity to work together with other +SocialGood Advisors and Connectors and to take part at the Social Good Summit, the SDG Media Zone, and the UN Solution Summit during United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) week.

From these provocative and inspiring conversations, what inspired me the most was people’s courage and the crowd power to drive real social impact. For me it all starts with the opportunity that new technologies have to empower one key human behavior: the will to participate and engage in causes that really matters. People want to feel part of a community, to contribute and drive a better society, and they have found in the digital society a way in to play the big game. Now with the emerging technologies such as data and blockchain, a new wave of innovation is allowing people to do the same but with exponential impact.

In addition to the Social Good Summit and Social Good Brasil Festival, which are based on the power of the crowd for social good, I saw this sentiment echoed during UN General Assembly (UNGA) Week at an event called the UN Solutions Summit, an annual gathering at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. This initiative showcases social entrepreneurs’ innovative solutions that are helping progress the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These are bottom-up, crowd-led solutions that mostly utilize a human-centric approach to world’s greatest problems.

One of the most interesting solutions I saw was from Mexico addressing a huge challenge; organized crime. The #GIResilience Project’s focus is to build resilient communities in the context of organized crime. They incubate, replicate, and promote the capacities of local communities to fight criminal governance themselves.

In the context of low technology solutions, it is possible to understand how blockchain can be used as a principle to operate in a distributed power manner, such as in the #GIResilience Project. Another example I saw duringt UNGA was from a high tech blockchain solution called Greenstorc. Greenstorc creates clean energy from any heat source. Their disruptive technology is an alternative to fossil fuels and uses blockchain to distribute. It generates 24-hour electricity at affordable prices worldwide.

“Blockchain is an opportunity to reset the economy,” said Michael Mathias, DasCoin CEO, when we met at the UNGA. DasCoin is an ecosystem to create and share value in an equitable manner between participants offering blockchain services. One of the solutions, Das33, was launched at UNGA. Das33 is a platform that uses blockchain technology to tokenize smart contracts in an immutable digital format for early-stage businesses. Greenstorc had a successful Das33 pre-sale launch, achieving €1.5 million in just 60 hours. DasCoin is also part of UN’s Blockchain Commission which is pushing forward a blockchain for impact collaboration.

As examples are the force to inspire us, blockchain has been at the latest Social Good Brasil Festival main stage twice and led by powerful women. Nina Silva presented the D’Black Bank, a fintech using blockchain to connect consumers and entrepreneurs. Nina is also founder of the Black Money Movement within an amazing 16 years of IT curriculum and was named one of the Most Influential People of African Descendent (MIPAD, ONU). We’ve had also the participation of Liliane Tie, featuring Women in Blockchain Brasil.

The digital economy has powerfully offered autonomy, access, scale and transparency to every individual who seeks to engage with social good. In addition, blockchain technology is increasing transparency and inclusion and creating a more participatory economy. We cannot forget that at the center, the start, and the end is always the people who have the ability to use those technologies for good.