This proposal relates to the Hackathon and Internship Program Proposal (<https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/404841>) in the "Grow Africa Grow Cardano" campaign. In fact, both proposals are part of our global education strategy that seeks to contribute to leveling the social and economic playing field and unlocking the right to first-class knowledge in developing countries. In the short term future, we will implement in Latin America a similar educational metodology that will encourage social and economic equality in Latin America while promoting Cardano as one of the leaders in the fight for social and economic equality in this region of the planet, making this proposal the seed that will start it all in that part of the world.
Main features of the project:
-Take the Haskell-Plutus course currently taught in English since last year to students from African, Asian and Latin American countries (see Course Description - English version pdf) and create a course in Spanish for Latin American and Spanish-speaking students in the world. The current course, taught in English over 13 weeks, is based on the educational material provided directly by IOG, under the educational partnership established between IOG and EBU. The proposal will improve the assimilation process of Haskell and Plutus by smoothing the friction generated by the language barrier, generating a more intimate learning process between one of the key resources of the Cardano ecosystem (Plutus) and the student located in the shifting sands of the social and economic inequality of his own country of origin.
The European Business University of Luxembourg (EBU) (<https://ebu.lu>) is a respected educational institution in the mission of provide world-class education to students who cannot afford it, especially in regions of the world where social and economic inequality is a major obstacle in the process of growth of the human spirit. Contributing to build fairer, innovative and growing communities is EBU's business, which is why IOG has considered us as a strategic partner to disseminate the technical knowledge of one of its core resources to young countries that are still on the way to find their own destiny. Besides IOG, other respected organisations have given us their vote of confidence, among them: Women in Businnes - Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KNCCI), African Youth Abroad Empowerment (AYAE), African Coding Network - UMUZI, Ernst & Young (EY) Colombia, International Graduate Center (IGC) Bremen, among other important organisations (the complete list here: https://ebu.lu/partnerships/))
-Upload the Haskell - Plutus course in Spanish to the EBU online platform (<https://connect.ebu.lu/>) and teach a certificate course during 14-weeks, starting in june 2022 (Term III - Academic Year 21/22).
-At the end of the course, after fulfilling the academic and practical requirements proof of satisfactory learning, the students will receive a certificate of the course.
-This educational resource will be the basis for teaching Haskell-Plutus to later cohorts of the course in Spanish and for the implementation of related educational strategies in Latin America in the near future (one of them is described in the proposal "Hackathon and Internship Program" Proposal <https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/404841>). The course will be subject to updates and improvements as the Cardano ecosystem evolves.
-On the final week of the course, students are required to complete a final project challenge. Here, they are given a real-world problem statement and are required to work in groups to develop smart contracts to solve the problem to pass the course (visit our repository <https://github.com/TechEBU> to see samples of these projects).
-EBU plans to have EBU Hubs where our developers will be linked to corporations/ businesses in the Region and outside, who require smart contracts to improve their operations. The students will get to intern in these corporations as they build on these solutions. This not only creates future potential employment opportunities for them but also is an avenue for them to work on real business problems (basically, the same methodology formulated in the proposal "Hackathon and Internship Program" Proposal <https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/404841> applied to Latin America. As you can see, the EBU's global education strategy has overall coherence and is aligned with Cardano's objectives)
-By sharing our proposal with the Latin American Catalyst community (members of the Catalyst TH LATAM), we have noticed a special interest in our Spanish course from companies in the Region that, seeking to deepen their link with the Cardano ecosystem, want to involve their staff in learning Plutus and for that purpose, are looking for a reliable educational resource in Spanish, supported by IOG.
-The potential job opportunities that emerge from this will create a demand for the skill, encouraging more people to take on Cardano development.
-Our developers will be helping in building the Cardano blockchain in Latin America, encouraging more development and adoption of the Cardano blockchain in this Region.
Miro board of the proposal in https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOG2cy-M=/?invite_link_id=359421357470
Probably, Latin America will be the next Africa: same social and economic complexity, and therefore same innovative and creative potential.
The proposed solution answers the following guiding questions of the F8 "Developers Ecosystem" Campaign:
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How do we attract developers from outside of our current community to participate in Cardano?
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What would make it a developer motivated to grind through the docs and code no matter how hard it is to create an app?
"Why is it important?" is one of the main question of the Campaign. "Creating an awesome experience that incentives developers, will lead to increased developer adoption, productivity, and creativity" is the answer. Our proposed solution is in tune with the answer.
The proposed solution contributes to the following KPIs of the F8 "Developers Ecosystem" Campaign:
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Number of developers actively building on top of Cardano
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Number of repos on Github using the tooling: our Plutus repo (<https://github.com/TechEBU>) is the stack where our students publish their projects with the EBU and Cardano community.
The truth is: the silver bullet can come from any place. For Cardano, as an innovative organisation that seeks to improve existing social and economic systems, the best strategy is to cover as much ground as possible, especially in places that experience the greatest social and economic pressure from those systems, because it is precisely from there, from the necessity, that the most powerful ideas emerge. Latin America is one of those places.
Cardano ecosystem has to be easy to learn and use for Latin American newcomers and budding talents. To that end, Cardano needs educational resources to provide quality education on Plutus, improve the assimilation process of Haskell and Plutus by smoothing the friction generated by the language barrier and generate a more intimate learning process between one of the key resources of the Cardano ecosystem (Plutus) and the students. Our solution will create an educational resource that help Latin American developers more easily write and deploy smart contracts on the Cardano blockchain and accordingly, increase the adoption of the Cardano blockchain in Latin America.
The higher the quality of educational resources, the faster developers can be engaged and create applications with a high level of quality and security.
The European Business University of Luxembourg (EBU) is a non-profit organisation that designs and develops educational products and services that put in the hands of students tools connected to real-world problems, with professors and human talent of the highest academic and professional level that transpire what is happening in the world.
In its educational work in developing countries, the University has prioritised access to education over economic costs. Its intensive scholarship programme, in which students pay only a minimal tuition fee ($20 EUR is the current rate) for certificate courses in the areas of business and technology, has enabled it to position itself as a reliable educational provider in countries in Africa, East Asia and Latin America (see graph below "EBU Scholarship Demographics - By Country").
In Latin America our Spanish language courses in business areas are well known, and now, with IOG as our partner, we are ready to bring Cardano's technical knowledge to Latin America, just as we have done in countries such as Kenya and Nigeria.
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Possible Risk: Natural difficulty of course topics (Haskell and Plutus). Strategy of Mitigation: As a respected and established university, our reputation has been baked under the smouldering fire of teaching complex topics to communities under serious socio-economic hardship. Proof of this is the vote of confidence that IOG and other equally respected organisations fighting on the same battlefield give to our work. In the framework of the collaboration with IOG, we have already delivered our "Haskell
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Possible Risk: Insufficient understanding of Latin American socio-cultural complexities may hinder the teaching process. Strategy of Mitigation: The diversity is part of our daily live. We have taught in countries such as Luxembourg, Germany, Kenya, Nigeria, Colombia, and many others, each with its own socio-cultural characteristics. In the end, they are all students, and we are their teachers.
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Possible Risk: The Spanish course may not be ready for the start of the second semester. Some unforeseen delay in the creation of the course and subsequent uploading to the University's online platform may occur. Strategy of Mitigation: 06 June 2022 has already been published on our platform as the starting date of our academic activity for the Term III - Academic Year 21 / 22. The creation of the Spanish course and the uploading to the platform will be done simultaneously. In the worst case scenario, the first week of the course will already be uploaded and ready two months before the deadline.
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Possible Risk: not enough spanish speaker students to generate a good critical mass. Strategy of Mitigation: On the one hand, our work in Latin America has allowed us to distinguish ourselves as a world-class educational institution in the region, worthy of trust. As Latin America starts to get closer to Blockchain technology and to Cardano specifically as builder and provider of that technology, we will be in a privileged position as providers of Cardano's certified know-how. This situation will be of great strategic benefit to the Cardano ecosystem itself in the long term. In the short term, and with a view to the start of our Spanish course next semester, we will rely, among other strategies, on our partnership with IOG to attract interested Spanish-speaking audiences. The number of new Spanish-speaking members joining Catalyst is increasing, as well as the number of projects funded in each fund coming from Latin American regions. The vast majority of new and old Catalyst members have the natural impulse to create their own Dapps in Cardano and therefore the automatic desire to learn how to operate Cardano's core resources (Plutus, Marlowe, Atala). However, the language barrier prevents an important part of the Spanish-speaking community from establishing a fluent relationship with the Cardano blockchain. Given the complexity of the topic for all the participants in the program, among the potential Spanish-speaking Cardano developer community is well-known the desire for a Spanish version of the Plutus Pioneers Program. That is exactly the need we are trying to satisfy.