That’s an awesome initiative @MilaRioja ! We’re all up to support creative ways to strengthen the LATAM community and would love to be featured in the Recap Report.
We selected a few highlights. We also just published the full account from our journey in our Substack.
Blockchain na Escola's achievements
2022
Q1 2022: Foundation
Project founded by @Marcelo and first workshops conducted in a public school in Serra, Espírito Santo. He taught students about Web3 specifically focusing on its career prospects. The interest of the students and the teachers confirmed the demand for such content, while also shedding light on the challenges of bringing blockchain technology to public schools.
Q4 2022: Prezenti Grant
Acquired our first Prezenti grant! The $30K USD we received was instrumental to kick-off a new chapter for the project in public schools in Salvador, Bahia, in 2023. Special thanks to @MayaRB and @Wade for all the invaluable support and information provided during the whole semester.
BnE’s Celo multi-sig: 0x2e07c3467D3EcBEe6750eF69cdBf30D494e105D2
2023
1st Semester: Reaching Students in Bahia, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais
During the first semester of 2023, we conducted 20 workshops, impacting 400+ students and 20+ teachers. Student NPS: 59, Satisfaction (Top2Box): 79. Detailed report
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Our core team led 19 student workshops, 5 teacher workshops and 3 events (e.g., talks, stand) in 7 public schools in Salvador and Lauro de Freitas, Bahia.
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Our Lawyer and Regional Lead @Verb4l led workshops in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, in partnership with “Eu Amo Minha Quebrada,” a social initiative dedicated to providing education for the community in the Morro do Papagaio favela.
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Verber also partnered with Detrash to sponsor the “Recicla Kids” recycling initiative, where children learned about ReFi through practical engagement.
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We wrapped up the semester by taking our workshop to Rio de Janeiro through our partnership with the Educar+ social movement, which provides education in the Morro do Chapadão favela.
Paving the Path to BnE’s Decentralization
In July, we gathered the full BnE team for the first time in order to start the implementation of a decentralized governance structure based on Target Teal’s O2 framework.
During the gathering, we revisited our mission and vision statements and defined our organization’s Circles, which represent autonomy spaces within the project. Meaning, each Circle is entitled to provide its own planning and execution strategies as long as they abide by the project’s bylaws. We believe this new structure will allow BnE to scale faster by onboarding teachers and other contributors from different regions.
We encourage other organizations to think through their governance structure and would happily share learnings from our experience with them.
Notable meetings
- March: Met with the teacher Astor Junior, Director of Innovation at the Secretaria de Educação da Bahia (SEC). Although we didn’t settle a deal at the time, we learned a lot about what the SEC expects from educational projects focused on technology and plan to revisit this connection later this year.
- April: Met with Iuri Rubim, Director of the Instituto Anísio Teixeira (IAT), responsible for teacher training in Bahia. That led to an invitation to present BnE at the Festival de Invenção e Criatividade (FIC) and he even attended a happy hour with us. That’s an opportunity to institutionalize BnE’s teacher training activities.
- July: Met with Jaqueline Alves, Director of Entrepreneurship from the Secretaria de Promoção da Igualdade Racial da Bahia (SEPROMI). We were invited to participate in their inauguration of the Centro de Empreendedorismo Negro, in partnership with the Secretaria de Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação da Bahia, which will foster black people’s entrepreneurship in Bahia. That’s a high-visibility opportunity among government agencies and we’ve just sent our proposal to them (Project Proposal)
Events:
- BnE presentation at the Bahia Expo event: Alan (BnE’s Educator) gave a presentation about ReFi and our project in the event organized by SEBRAE.
- Built a team of public school students to participate remotely in the Hack on Chain hackathon in May, that took place in Warsaw, Poland.
- Suape’s Industrial Portuary Complex Environment Week (June 5-7th): Talk on ReFi with presence of the complex’s board, academics and consulting agencies (e.g., ICLEI). Suape’s Magazine article, Recording.
- Ekonavi’s Agroecological Circuit: Verber (BnE’s Lawyer) attended the launch event of the Ekonavi’s token in the event, which will support financing and catalyzing environmental regeneration projects, and actively participated in organizing the 2nd Edition of the Agroecological Circuit, held at Horta da Baixada in the Taquaril community.
- July: Met with key players of the NFT scene in Brazil in the NFT Brazil, as a speaker our founder had the opportunity of meeting several newcomers to Web3. One of the results were the invitation to write down a proposal to apply our educational framework to foster the diversification of the economic matrix through the digitalization of creative and bio economy (Project Proposal).
