Impacting Real-Life Communities through Digital Ones with Michelle, Will & Lawson

Transcript

foreign [Music] pool.network podcast if you're just joining us we are building a coordination and network Society of thousands of hackers dreamers and doers focused on using crypto to bring positive sum digital systems to the world this podcast features the people who are doing it and is published every Tuesday and Thursday if you want to learn more you can visit our website at greenpill.network where you can download the green pill book join the Discord or become a member of your local greenpill.network podcast my guests today are will little Michelle Schubert AKA alidra.xyz and Latte Lawson will is the managing director at protaventures Michelle is executive director of impact

stream and director of global resources at International literacy and development and Latte Lawson is the field director of ilad Togo and has helped over 1500 Farmers move from poverty to thriving latte oversees many overseas development initiatives and they are all partners and leaders in the project that we are discussed today which is entitled impact stream so basically what is impact stream impact stream is a new NGO that is using web3 to do decentralized poverty alleviation so they're running a pilot program in which they're going to accept proposals from now until the end of August there's

going to be votes in September and they're going to give be giving out Monday in the West African nation of Togo in October they're hoping to raise 200k for this pilot they've raised 50k so far and the idea here is to imbue in the local togoles community the sovereignty the ability to decide where the money goes in their local community it with a web application that is powered by getcoin's Aloe protocol and quadratic voting and is funded by the crypto community so basically we are disrupting the way International Aid is done in providing a more transparent corruption resistant and and stable source of funds for for doing

International Aid and this is a pilot program that shows that web3 can be used in this kind of environment so I'm really excited about just the boldness of this experiment and the legitimacy that will and Latte and alidra bring to this experiment because of their experience working in this ecosystem for for many many years so I think that this is in many ways a just a beautiful expression of what the crypto Community could do in order to to help people be pulled out of poverty and I think that the fact that we can use decentralization for this beautiful the use case just it makes me makes me very happy so um impact.stream is the project

you can check it out at HTTP colon impact.stream you can donate at impactstream.eath and you can follow them on Twitter at twitter.com impactstream so check out the links in the show notes if you're interested in checking out the website and without further Ado I give you will adleidra and Latte who are talking about impact stream decentralizing poverty alleviation for West Africa enjoy it Valley Dao is an open Global Collective working to finance and democratize the governance of synthetic biology Technologies to protect the future of our planet research and progress into synthetic biology is critically constrained by the world of nation-state regulations and bureaucracy from middlemen but the potential that

synthetic biology has for the world is massive it can produce a world in total harmony with nature we can grow stuff using cells like software it's awesome and the best part is we no longer have to pull carbon out of the ground to grow and maintain civilization don't you think we should be funding this Valley Dow does and that's what they're here to do to try and make the solar Punk World of Tomorrow a reality today so join Valley Dao right now and save the planet at valleydow.bio welcome to the greenpill.network podcast my guests today are will little Michelle Schubert AKA alidra and Latte Lawson welcome to the show y'all thank you yeah thanks for having us really excited to talk about impact stream uh leader you want to tease off

and tell us what impact stream is sure yeah so in this space we talk about decentralization a lot and for me I've worked in like poverty alleviation and development work and non-profit work around the world for about nine years and so it was kind of an interesting idea to me to think what would decentralization look within look like within poverty alleviation so in addition to that are big goal with starting impact stream was to connect digital communities to IRL impact you know all of these great technological advances how can we actually use them to help people with obstacles people who are

struggling or communities who are under resourced and so uh kind of these two ideas together uh formed formed impact stream and I I think I'll wait to jump into our current project but that's kind of the the impact stream in a nutshell the origin story um I'd be curious to hear from you will what your origin story is with impact stream and then maybe we can we can take it from there yeah for sure I've been investing in this space uh since early 2017 maybe like many of the listeners went through the Ico craze uh survived the winter invested in infrastructure lots of infrastructure plays the last few years

um and so we saw the D5 summer cone we saw nfts come and helped launch four different Dows uh just basically a technologist ventured capitalists by by trade and have always been looking for an application right just more applications I've been working in anti-human trafficking for 14 years so I've always had an eye toward IRL impact uh social impact as a way to um to bring like a real application that helps humans flourish globally with web3 so meeting Michelle leading latte learning about their NGO work with International literacy and development in Togo uh created a really tremendous

opportunity for us to create an application that we'll get into in this episode and I'm excited to share more about it well uh how did you all get hooked up with latte and what is impact stream what is the pilot project y'all are doing together that's that's for anyone yeah so uh I began working with International literacy and development back in 2018 and Latte Lawson here is the field director for ilad Togo so he he runs like all the initiatives and operations within uh Togo for international literacy and development that's when so back in 2018 is when latte and I met and Latte do you want to add anything to that

uh no accidents that's great what you say and and okay uh and so for the last I don't know more than a decade latte correct me if if I'm wrong more than a decade you've been doing work uh with International nursing development on the ground with people in Togo um I mean things like helping lift 1500 Farmers out of out of poverty and giving them um you know structure to their farming and a market for their cash crops um all sorts of really neat things also uh uh your wife meaning um overseeing the literacy program for

women in that area uh there's just a lot of initiatives that have kind of um large networks and because of that we thought that Togo would be a really good spot to launch our uh pilot project at impactstream so uh the network that we have in Togo through latte is is there's many you know is is hundreds if not if not many more um that are kind of in direct connection so uh having that trust Network there and having seen development work be successful for years and years really through the local people uh we wanted to

say okay so far you know historically or traditionally an NGO or a non-profit comes into an area uh and comes up with ideas on how to solve the local people's problems but we would rather hear from the local people uh how they would want to solve their I was like actually first what is your what is a local problem and how would you solve it uh giving given proper funding and so uh our pilot project is there in Togo within that trust Network we've invited all togalese people to join our web application um propose uh or actually State what

problem their Community is facing and then propose a solution to that problem that's kind of the the gist and I'm wondering specifically where this all where this all meets together so it sounds like there's a network of people on the ground in Togo which as we all know is a is a nation in West Africa and then there is web 3 and decentralization and I'm wondering how these how these connect what value does decentralization bring to the projects that you're that you're doing in Togo well do you want to explain the the tech pieces yeah if we start if we start with the fundamental belief that the local people have the ability to both identify and solve their local problems with the right injection

of technology and Aid right it's not bringing technology in a way that that is just haphazard and doesn't actually help and it's not breaking Aid in a way that destroys the local economy um and you know wipes out entrepreneurship etc etc so how can the right injection of technology and Aid be be actually helpful well we went to Togo a few weeks ago got to meet latte and had had an opportunity to see tangibly both the internet speeds that that are available you know it's it's spotty it's here or there it's it's kind of what you would expect but it's shockingly fast uh in in such a in such an area of the world that you wouldn't expect

so we have built a progressive web application that is in French in a way and in English that they can onboard using their toggle Togo phone number thanks to the team at privy for for that application so that we can tie a wallet address right so those listening in are probably familiar if you're listening to this podcast probably familiar with all things crypto and so we could tie the wallet address to their phone number so that when they vote on these proposals that all those votes will be on chain right the proposal metadata will be on chain and we can we can use quadratic voting as a as a way to identify the highest priority projects that they themselves

want to see happen and then based on the results of that we can we're going to have each project have a maximum for this first round each project is going to have a maximum of 20 000 US Dollars equivalent if we can raise let's say two hundred thousand dollars fingers crossed then we can fund um 10 proposals and so the way we'll be able to follow it on shade you'll see the money go from impactstream.e into our togo.impact stream.east wallet address on ethereum mainnet you'll then see the the money go to all the proposals that get funded into the wallet address of the of the proposals uh it looks like based on our friends

over at cello we're going to have an off ramp into the local CFA currency um via Alpha Fortress and and cellos uh Valera app um that will go directly into the T-money application that's the the venmo equivalent in the in the in the country of Togo so yeah the latte I'd actually like to hear you share more about um the types of proposals that you want to see funded and and how just practically you see that that money at that off ramp into T-money working locally there let me add something to uh the question um as

uh I mean them the impasse goals is is through this set of coming with a solution pretty pretty amazing solution pretty uh established solution or uh we have all they still or how we we must solve the problem even though uh they though fully understand their the program the the so the uh at here we we want to sing with the local I mean

those who are living on the ground and uh facing the challenge and they they are the one proposing a solution for the program they are living so uh it passed through using technology uh to help just stakeholder to be able to solve that program so we we try we I try personally would uh will to to see how the uh and the cryptocurrency work I I honestly I never right and it's not that

he showed me that the steps I followed at the end of the day I was able to get by the money on my e-wallets for URL we have a mobile money application uh record Simon and sell 10 dollars I have equivalence of vendors local currency so I think at the end of the day this is a very good Scottish see how the money from the donors to their uh stakeholders and they see how that project instantly okay in

in the in the ground amazing thanks latte thanks will Michelle anything Dad no I mean I I love that latte's emphasizing that it's it's the people who are living the struggle are the ones proposing how to solve it instead of a foreigner or any anybody else who's not you know facing uh the problem themselves and then like you said you know will and him were able to uh link up and just do a few tests and figure out how to get uh how to get digital currency into uh you know a togolese currency so the togoli sifa so let me play back what I heard in tell me if it's true reductionist but it seems like basically what you're doing is

you're using web3 to to inject capital in a way that the local people get to decide what it's used for so you get the local context in sovereignty of deciding where the capital goes but then you have access to the transparency and immutability and if people in the blockchain ecosystem fund the impact stream Bitcoin Grant and donate at extreme.eath then they're able to provide funding so it's a new decentralized uh way of of doing Community First Aid uh with within Togo is that your reductionist did I get did I come close that's right because I think we we have an opportunity to not only is it going to be local vendors that are going to be

the people swinging the hammer uh of laying the infrastructure for whatever public goods IRL public goods that are going to be funded here but the vision right similar to what we've been talking about at web 3 for a long time around a decentralized finance future the vision is they will see their local velora app on cello or whatever wallet that they want to use in D5 as equivalent to their T-money right it would become tangible and real as a digital form of currency and they will start transacting in that amongst themselves uh and and that will then allow access to a global economy so it's

yes we talked about banking the unbanked uh which is extremely extremely important but there are so many development steps language development holistic poverty alleviation development that are needed to get to a place where somebody can have an an Android phone with a stable enough connection with a wallet software like velora in order to to actually make that happen so the vision we see is that all of the people as many as possible have crypto wallets and it's obviously super easy for them to use very very analogous to what they use right now and T money and then we we via impact stream you can see the stream of impact from a donor and rural Alabama

to a wallet address that then goes to a project address that then it does to a vendor that then goes to somebody swinging a hammer and and you can you can see that transparently and that what our hope is that not only will that give donors more optimism more uh trust that that this is actually going to impact the world but it will uh it will create more efficiency right more transparently more efficiency because inefficiency in the NGO space let alone with fraud and all the bribery and everything that happens out there allowing the the web 3 rails to create more efficiency is it is super powerful so both with donor trust and NGO

efficiency I see as a very powerful application for web3 got it so to boil it down it sounds like web3 provides a transparent audit Trail uh for this technology and it also creates more efficiency exactly exactly one of the you know one problem that a lot of people have with with non-profits is like okay I give a hundred dollars but how do I know where it went like I can't watch it go anywhere and I have to do like weirdly deep Financial digging to even find out like anything about you know how do they spend their money how much goes to overhead how much actually goes to the project that I donated to uh things like that so this does solve that problem of transparency you can actually watch your dollars

go to the people that you donated it to and then secondly just as as somebody that's worked in non-profit things for years there was a problem with actually I wish latte was still on here you could you could attest to this um looks like maybe his internet dropped out or something but uh last year in Togo we were trying to send money to um to help an entrepreneur start a well drilling business and that was another thing that will little helped uh help me get going there in Togo but uh when we send money to be a wire uh the bank just decided not to give it like it was like it didn't look right or they wanted to make sure it wasn't fraud or but there they added all these steps that made it impossible to actually get the money to

latte so we had already waited three days for the wire transfer or something and then we had to wait another month for paperwork and then eventually I think latte had to end up driving to a different country to go to a different bank to get them like it was just a a chaotic hassle that is now alleviated because we can just send the money directly to their wallets you know and there's there's no there's 30 seconds waiting you know easy yeah this kind of reminds me of a story I had an early git coin I had a bunch of Engineers that would appear in in places that couldn't trust their Banks uh they started doing work on bitcoin so I think Nigeria was one there was other countries in Africa there was also Eastern Europe and they would basically be able to earn on

bitcoin and get paid within 15 seconds whereas if they tried to do similar work on upwork then they would be fighting with their bank for like months in order to get it so uh I know it's a cliche to say this but like web prefix is this uh when it comes to the the flow of the funds 100 I wish I wish latte was here to answer this question and I know that he dropped because his internet was a little bit shaky but I'm wondering if you all can answer it what kind of projects are actually going to be in the pilot round so what kind of local on the ground initiatives object level are going to be funded during this pilot project okay so we can't say for sure because uh they haven't been officially submitted yet but uh we did interview while we

were launching launching the app uh in Togo a few weeks back we did do some interviews and ask people what they were thinking and what kinds of prod problems in their Community they were trying to solve so we have we have an array of ideas uh from them uh and so we'll see if those come to fruition in in their proposals and we'll see then of course like if the community agrees and votes on those projects but uh some of the projects that that were mentioned uh were things like a medical doctor was at one of our launch meetings and he said something about how he lives he lives in the capital and in the area that he lives there's like a lot of addiction um I think mostly alcoholism but maybe

drugs or something like that and he said that there's no like proper uh rehab center that helps integrate people back into their real life and me being a medical doctor like I want to help solve that and so he was thinking those terms other people said things like oh I want more internet capabilities in Togo or some people said clean water uh out in the rural areas we heard things like clean water uh one man is a school teacher in the area and he wants a library for the area and they've never had a library there's nothing like that uh will do you remember any others that that people brought up yeah there were there were multiple aspects actually of the school the school infrastructure toilets uh uh kitchen right so that they

can actually have a way to convene and have food with one another um and and so it's interesting as we were on the ground as people were brainstorming what to submit to this application how they were how they were rallying their Community around it so uh it looks like we're getting latte back here and he can he can share more about that I think latte has a vision for uh a number of different proposals but yeah latte if you're back and if you can hear us you want to share more about your hopes for the types of proposals that get funded there there in Togo yes I I was I don't know if it's possible to come back but uh when you are sharing

your the business program or using uh there were three what is your at my mind one thing I really like about this is not only that conspiracy buttons to help the donors and the big borders to not only know what what boy next also let's say if the McDonald's want to see a product and and give money or it and

provided folding boy and he is to impacting application how the people it's implementing on the ground and then also to take care of the project I mean it will see in the big organization the way the monitor do the monitoring of the projects part of the phone going to support those projects is to eat out of the the police use to uh to have a

facility for those organization to not only to live but to do what happen they want to do so that when yeah we don't have anything like that and that helps to see that only go straight to the ground and they'll see that women I personally want to for my community want to see because we I I love being I was born in the world and after my education want to come back and then I am back in the rural area still working there and but we don't have a good

Hospital Pacific as health system is a Italy yeah so but by God grace I grew up with the pray to uh the militant doctor and some of that I helped them to go to school and they wanted to come back and most of them are in terms now okay I'm happy about and medical doctors who are interested they they want to come back and once we have the acidity and they have prostitute on them to come back and work and to serve their people and I think

we we are going to submit this also to the 18 passive application is we have a chance to be selected I think that would be great to provide equal to Urban group system and that that will be a very well another thing I want to be also found it is remember poetry farm and being opportunity to 100 young people to have their own part three prime bets first I'm going to train them and show them

how to do it and then have them after one year or three and to have their own pocket part and then have a good tree and then once they read the invite from them and then process and send uh chickens and and then generates more income to for those the president and then if everything one uh goes well we can replicate the thing too for another 100 people for the second round and then go acquired

thank you yeah and so Lottie just mentioned the hospital you know or at least medical more Medical Care um I Heard a stat uh that Togo has one doctor for every 25 000 people uh within tobalance well uh you know I just I second that I I want to see that happen we've been involved in you know little medical clinics that we put on out in out in rural areas and the lines are too big people walk from all over to just to get medical help um and so something like that would be amazing to be able to fund as well as as he's saying you know it's expanding his

demonstration Farm to to have a poultry uh a poultry farm to show others how to you know Farm their own poultry so yeah there's just so many ideas that could be funded and that would transform the lives of so many toglies yeah it was inspiring to be there a few weeks ago regular latte is right now in the demonstration Farm um you know it takes a couple hours at least in a very very bumpy roads to uh to access out from the capital city of lome and the way that he has helped now almost 2 000 people uh come out of poverty learn how to grow crops to feed their families learn how to grow crops pineapples specifically to sell into the marketplace sell into a juicing business

called thirsty that latte help launch um and then to think that funds from Impact stream could help uh replicate this into a poultry farm as he mentioned that it would be another demonstration Farm to help teach people how to how to raise poultry and add that to their overall economic development is really inspirational another very important point that I kind of picked up that we picked up when we were there I said yes uh dealing with the Fiat banket system is difficult for a whole variety of reasons and yes there is currency risk that at any moment the who knows what if the currency is going to be no longer stable and and not not worth very much but it it it really

creates an opportunity where we can have access to Capital I learned when I was there that a lot of these people that provide Capital like loans and whatnot are charging 25 30 percent uh on on Capital and that they have to kind of do that because they have to have insurance for banking risk they have to kind of bake in currency risk um and then just because of the the trust Network aspect you have to bake in sort of a reliability risk but if a combination of the trust networks that we can do through similar efforts that we've done with impact stream and the the trust that that web 3 brings in terms of visibility for movement of money I hope that we can bring those rates down significant perfectly and

provide access to Capital that is sort of part of the utopian Vision with D5 here so that the entrepreneurs can get uh can get money to build that you know it only takes what latte five thousand alone of about five thousand dollars to move somebody from three hundred dollars to ten thousand dollars a year in income is that is that reply yeah five thousand and and how are people getting access to those kind of loans today like are you funding it or how do they use the traditional banking system or do you see a way here that that web3 can help uh actually wept help [Music]

I mean yeah to have access to the after is also um easily loan our government workers I mean they they they the government is like the collapse or I mean the job once they are working for the government and uh especially those who don't have access to the Lord would you are working in agriculture field because the thing agriculture is high risk activity pretty School way Parts but he they don't want to try I

don't I just feel like they don't want it and then also girls who are those who have a small business is I mean we in Africa we don't own the travel have this problem business like in the in the Western World in those who have a small business this is very difficult for them and nobody that like the lady who visited last time nobody will give that no it took I I gave him that five thousand and then the next time the next step uh when she was to open the second shot then with all the them publishes for the festival and she applied uh

eight thousand to open the second one the third one so it's it's like a street money as ever and from that point she's able to build all it and then be able to open two more Shops and and we can do a lot and it impact stream game create that Capital asset system for a lot of you know business small businesses or in labia beautiful well I'm wondering as we get into wrapping up the episode we only

have five minutes so we've gotta gotta Land This Plane soon there's one question that I want to ask that I just want to make sure that we get out there which is um you know there's been a long history of Western organizations funding Aid in um in African nations in other parts of the world and um I think that there's been a lot of mistakes made in that history too and I know that Michelle you and and will have kind of studied the history of aided how sometimes the aid can even be devastating to local communities so I guess what lessons can we learn from the history of of of these Aid organizations and uh how is impact stream aiming to get around that with with their initiative you know we've touched on just a moment we touched on it a little

where you know instead of instead of a Westerner an outsider or Foreigner coming in and deciding what the problem is and what needs to be done the big thing one of the biggest things is listening to the local people listening to the people who are actually living the struggle and hearing how they view the problem and how they would fix it um that's one of the big that's one of the big steps another one is um making sure that any development steps we're taking are as sustainable as possible you know we don't want we don't want anybody in Togo to have to rely on anybody outside of Togo you know we want we want uh togalese people to just like latte has done build something

sustainable build something that uh that's going to last whether or not there's a Westerner you know giving money to it behind the scenes or whatever um and so it baked into our our proposal process you know some of the questions are around how is this proposal that you're that you're making sustainable how is it going to is it going to be regenerative in any way um and having them explain what their thinking is around making this project uh solid for the long term in that way that way we know or we can be confident as much as possible that when we do send in funding and this gets built uh it's not a well that's going to break in six

months and then no one has the the you know funding or the know-how to fix it so so really we're trying to set it up uh with with you know Generations down the road in mind and when I when I think strategic injection of Aid that doesn't Wipe Out the local economy like you know they brought a bunch of rice into Haiti after the earthquake and then it uh destroyed the local rice economy which then kept people in poverty for much much longer a way to avoid that like in my world as a venture capitalist when I see uh entrepreneurs building Ventures and they're able to get non-diluted grants right you can kind of think what impact stream is doing is we're actually

empowering entrepreneurs the local vendors who have these businesses to build that infrastructure as essentially a non-dilutive grant to help Infuse a spark to help initiate holistic development in those communities and that's just one part of it like as we talked about we want to talk about what working with different load agencies and and developing best practices around access to Capital as a second prong and then a third prong in my opinion would be would be Venture Capital like to actual actually invest in businesses that are that are providing jobs and basic uh economic development in these areas and I think for impact stream to oversee those three prongs where we're

starting first with transparent injection of strategic Aid as essentially non-dilutive grants into these projects is from my from my uh perspective is a really good way to get started here amazing well I'm wondering if we can move into into final thoughts uh and uh maybe latte I'll start with you is there anything I didn't ask the that you want to say as as we're wrapping up the episode yeah I want to for the uh the question about the eggs I I want just to say that and pack streaming slots coming to Africa especially what I see them see all really to do it they don't have any

more agenda like hey we you want it for you to submit the project you have to you need to have this and that and that so that's that's what I see I used to see they took their aid to submit our government is they come they have their own ad they wanted to do according to the agenda otherwise thoughts have uh that only so yeah we don't have anything like that uh

it's not like um or it backstream but I don't hear them say yeah that so I don't see how they will enter chair with any agenda eats they are wrong the one who are going to vote for their projects and the community or for those who are using the application add one we're going to choose that code that do they they will they see that all they are happy to see happen on so by doing that I do that I think that that is

title uh uh Google so thank you for for Jesus we need to go through uh from here to uh [Music] um we travel more time to explain why in past stream I mean what we and and bring in the open world I think it for me is society because this is a new idea I I never see it or and I never I never know opportunity what is seriously allowed and they are sharing

that they're so quite ready for a little you know I'm very excited to see all three scenario thank you thanks saute um will Michelle anything else uh that you want to say as we wrap up is there anything I didn't ask that that you wanna that you wanna add just that we'd love to have you join us in in our Discord is probably where most of the activity is happening right now with updates and discussion uh love the call to action for volunteers if you have a skill it's from storytelling the technical we'd love we'd love your help obviously you can donate at impactstream.eath if you're in crypto or you can go to our website impact.stream and there's donation links there if you work with a NGO that does work around the world where you can use this

software to run around like this with your own local communities uh we'd love to love to talk to you yeah ledra what did I miss anything there nope nope yeah currently we're looking for donations to help this this pilot project in Togo be really successful and that funding will be uh starting to be tranched out in October so so uh right now is the perfect time to to get your donation in and then you can watch your donation literally go and create impact in Togo all right well I think I want to thank you all for joining me on the green pill podcast I think this is a really interesting experiment in in doing decentralized poverty alleviation using web 3 and can't wait to see how it how it goes so

if you're an audience mem if you're in the audience then please check out impact.stream to learn more you can donate at impactstream.eath and you can follow on Twitter at Twitter twitter.com impact underscore stream will uh alidra and Latte thanks so much for joining me thank you thank you for having minutes foreign [Music] we just heard from alidra will and Latte I'm really excited about impact stream I think it is a bold experiment in using crypto to disrupt the way that ngos are funded and disrupt the way International Aid is done and I'm really excited to

see how the experiment goes you can check out their website at impact.stream thanks again for listening to the greenpill.network podcast this podcast features the people who are building a coordination a network Society of thousands of hackers dreamers and doers focused on using crypto to bring positive some digital systems to the world I think alidra and Latte and Will are shining examples of this if you value our work Please Subscribe rate and review Thanks so much peace and love see you next time