Please describe your proposed solution.
Context
In the African local context, women play a key role in designing and running local DeFi solutions on the ground within their communities. Most communities organize themselves into tontine groups, also locally known as Djangui. The main purpose of these groups is to create a community whose members can support each other in so many different ways. They build, strengthen and maintain their relationships through group initiatives and activities of all kinds. New members seeking to join the community are required to secure older members’ endorsements serving as a stake to enter the network. They form what we would call a Web of Trust. This societal organization serves as a base for a reputation system in several area of life, DeFi being the most prominent. Communities usually crowdfund for their initiative and also offer borrowing, lending, and insurances within. The network they build serves as what we would call credit score / credit history in the western world, but here it’s more about the level of trust people have in you and the person that endorses you. Women are truly the owners of local context DeFi algorithms and solutions.
Solution
We plan to extend our education program to train and equip 120+ leader women with the right tools in such a way that they are able to translate their local DeFi practices into designing, and implementing solutions (on the Cardano blockchain). We intend to help these leaders and pioneers to spread the word and serve as a catalyst for other women in their communities.
Our strategy resolve in three parallel and complementary activities. Marketing, Training, Spreading.
The first activity consist of focusing on marketing to search and recruit women into our Haskell and Plutus training Program. To reach this goal, we will be securing a stand at a high profile bi-yearly Devs and Enterprises Conference called PROMOTE. We intend to run workshops and mini prized Hackathons explaining the opportunities offered by the Blockchain technology and Cardano specifically. Our marketing campaign will also extend to schools, universities and technical institutions where we are creating clubs and running Hackathons through our funded proposal "Clubs + Hackathon = Cardano adoption". Lastly, we will running advertising campaign on local TV and radio stations as well as displaying at strategic locations billboards and posters.
Our second activity will consist of funneling pre-selected women into our ongoing Plutus education initiative and providing them with the necessary support to first learn Haskell, Software Architecture, Distributed Ledger Technologies then Plutus for smart contracts development. We currently have one brave women from ISTDI within our program and that on its own has sparked deep interest in many others from her institute. Our aim is to enroll more women into our program through the extra support from this proposal.
Our third and last activity will consist of extending our Plutus Program for women to other countries and educative programs seeking to close the gap we witness between males and females in the IT field and more specifically in Distributed Ledger Technology.
=>Click here for more context about Disruptive IT Cameroon, A Wada Hub
Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.
At the core of this proposal is the creation of a developer ecosystem geared toward women. Women leaders that we hope will serve as catalyst to convince others to join the adventure.
In order for Cardano succeed on the African market we need to focus on providing use cases applicable to Africans and women who are the designers and implementers of local on ground DeFi solutions are the solution.
What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?
The main risk here is lack of interest due to time constraint and/or financial constraint. We plan to offer training for free and also will motivate participants through hackathon prizes to mitigate this risk. Our previously funded proposal also include incentives for our intern.