LatAm W3 DAO Proposal

Hi All! For those who don’t know me yet my name is Mila Rioja, I lead the LatAm ecosystem at Celo Foundation. In an effort to grow the ecosystem in a collaborative fashion, welcoming the community feedback and active participation on different initiatives, we would like to invite you to build this project with myself and other community members, initially by giving your feedback on the below and later by engaging in the proposed initiatives and activities.

Goal

To spread awareness about the Celo protocol and increase its adoption, grow the Celo community with initiatives in the most used languages in LatAm (Portuguese and Spanish!), and help nurture the next cohort of great initiatives on Web3 .

Celo has one of the most global communities in crypto. In order to further expand decentralization and the localization of the protocol in different regions and cultures, we would love to empower local communities to lead local growth. We believe that folks on the ground are the most equipped to do this and that a grassroots approach will benefit the growth of Celo and its community.

Amount Requested

$1,100,000 worth of CELO

Areas of Focus

  1. Onboarding the Community: Local Onboarding – Awareness and Education

Help onboard new community members and developers, and guide them through the ecosystem.

Description Cost
Cost per event $5,000


|x 12 months x 2 (one PT one ESP per month)|$120,000|

  • Success metrics after 12 months:
    • 720 Participants
    • 10% downloading Contract Kit
    • 100% new followers on social media

Builder Growth: Attract emerging Web3 talent locally by focusing on local hackathons.

The primary objective is to support individuals and projects that are interested in building on Celo. We envision successful projects going on to receive funding from Celo Ecosystem.

Description Cost
Prizes $50,000
Venue & Food (Dinner/Lunch) $10,000
Media & Promotion $10,000
Platform & Administration $15,000
Translations and localizations $5,000
Total per Hackathon $90,000
X3 Hackathons per Year $270,000
Extras (extra hands/eventualities): $30,000
Total $300.000
  • Success Metrics:
    • 3 hackathons in LatAm
    • 150 hackathon participants per each hackathon
    • 30 submissions per each hackathon
    • Local Demo Day held with Top VCs scouts invited to attend.
    • Goal: VC funding for 1-3 projects per each hackathon

Accelerating Growth: Web3 Venture Builder (Solution Design + Project Development and Shipping + Capital)

Create a Web3 Venture Builder to help onboard successful Web2 projects that would like to make the transition to Web3. Help onboard projects through developer support

# Hours 2000
$ Hour 80
Extras (e.g. BD- related) $40,000
Total $200,000
  • Success Metrics:
    • 5 Web3 Studio Participants across the region
    • 100% Project Conversion Rate to Celo
    • 3 Projects converted to web3 with volume >$1M

Focus Area 4: Building Market Awareness and Brand Positioning

Build our community locally and on the ground. This includes translation of ecosystem news into local languages. Hosting Twitter spaces and local AMAs. Educating the community on projects in the ecosystem and programs and hosting meetups (in connection with Focus Area number #2 above).

Description Cost
Content Creation/Moderation/Influencers $5.000
Promos/Swags/Paid Ads $5.000
x 12 months (x2 languages) $240,000
  • Success Metrics
    • 2 Twitter Spaces per Week
    • 4 Instagram Lives per week
    • 20 Social Posts (Instagram, TikTok, Twitter) per Week
    • 2 Community Meetups per Month per active market (in partnership with Focus Area #2)
    • Ongoing management of local communication channels

Transparency & Progress

We commit to posting monthly updates on our progress. We plan to measure success by developing a set of reports that we will share quarterly tracking the progress of:

  • #Community members over time
  • #Active Developers over time
  • #Projects submitted in the end of the hackathon

Reports will be shared in the forum.

Useful Links

  • Twitte/.Instagram (@Celoorg.br @celo_esp)
  • Telegram (Celo Espanol / Celo Portugues)

Structure & Mult-Sig

Role Name Multisig
Developer Relations Alessandro Milagres [TBD]
Events, Marketing & Social Cristobal Pereira (CHI) [TBD]
Martina Mendoza (ARG) [TBD]
Gabriel Ribenboin (BRA) [TBD]
Growth Hacker [TBD]
Business Development Mila Rioja (BR) [TBD]
Santiago Mora (COL) [TBD]

Note: Open to update requested amounts. If you are interested, please reply to this post.

Extras: ($52,000)

  • Tooling
  • Legal review of structure, compliance and due diligence
    • In case another structure needs to be implemented due to legal review we will discuss with the community.

Compensation

  • Equivalent $100 worth of CELO per Hour, expectation is 5-10 hours per month
  • Between 7-10% of overall budget will go towards compensation
  • Regional Eco Leads will waive (not receive any) compensation from this money as long as part of the Foundation.

Transparency

  • Forum posts with updates
  • Social media posts
  • Quarter reports
  • Open work on Discord channel
35 Likes

I’m from Argentina and people I know that have heard of Celo are usually very excited about the network.

However, not a lot of people have heard of it. A lot of people know of blockchain but they usually mention Bitcoin, Ethereum and Polygon. This sort of initiative would help bring a lot more awareness to Celo, and Argentina has so many talented people that could bring a lot of value to the network.

Really excited about this initiative!

9 Likes

Hello.
Sounds good.
I want to be part of that :metal:

I think could help with Events, Marketing & Social as part of the Multisign Structure in representation of Colombia :colombia:

I want to grow the Colombia Ecosystem, and btw just to remind that we have the $cCOP proposal and I think this could be a huge oportunity for us in Latam.

6 Likes

This is exciting! Count on the Lovecrypto team to help spread the word.

4 Likes

Hi I’m David Pineda blockchain fan, I think it’s a great proposal because in Latin America people still have difficulties to understand the blockchain and the best thing is that celo offers financial inclusion for users.

I can support in accelerating growth: Web3 Venture Builder.

3 Likes

Hola @gnardini! Thank you for your report. I agree with your point, and also that Argentina is filled with Web3 native talent hat could be interested about Celo Community, and that awareness is super low One question I have to you (and also @juancamp1987 @edlovecrypto @davidpineda4 ): How crucial do you think it is for us to have this effort done in local languages (Portuguese and Spanish)? My personal experience is that it is off the essence that Celo is localized by the communities and that they feel comfortable communicating, receiving support and learning in local language.

3 Likes

It would be awesome to count with your help to localize initiatives and help host events trough Colombia (again!)! Its inspiring to see your interest and support. Vamosssss!!! As for cCOP proposal: do you want to post here on the forum about the event we co-hosted yesterday in Medellin and the feedback?

2 Likes

Ed: it would be amazing to count with your help to co-host events in the northeast region of Brazil and in the universities!

4 Likes

This is awesome to hear, @davidpineda4 ! What country are you from? Lets collab.

3 Likes

Great project MilaRioja. Capital is scarce in the region, while use cases are abundant.

Maybe the deployment of capital from Celo can be in traches - starting with a smaller cap for accelerator program, testing, and if successful (via pre-determined KPIs), increase budget accordingly.

Happy to support this iniciative.

6 Likes

I think it is very important to localize content to local languages. Not every developer speaks or reads English fluently. And there are very few learning resources for new Web3 developers in Portuguese for example. Blockchain protocols who do so will have a competitive advantage over protocols that have content only in one language.

6 Likes

Hey @jgabriel.eth ! I like your suggestion. Allow me to propose something along these lines with the other members and tag you in the next days.

2 Likes

Thank you for this, @edlovecrypto ! I also share your vision.

2 Likes

Hello,

I’m from Brazil and I thingk this sounds a great initiative because people are still confused about the blockchain initiatives and the possibilities of working with Web3.

I’m a growth hacker with experience in Social Media, Branding and Culture Insights, and I can support with Building Market Awareness and Brand Positioning

4 Likes

This proposal is more than necessary and @MilaRioja is the right person to address this topic.
Web3 and crypto is already a hot topic in LATAM, and we definitely need a local organization in order to coordinate and onboard more people to web3. This need comes from the fact that global coordination tends to mimic the institutional environment of the place where the new organizations are born, and creating a local organization in LATAM to address our needs and our goals, within our own culture and with our own language can be a game change to both LATAM and Celo.

Thanks Mila for raising the idea, and you can count on me and ReFi Spring to support this proposal.

7 Likes

My opinion is that in Colombia it is super crucial to do the events in the local language for the local people. :colombia:

Celo’s mission is "Financial Inclusion and Prosperity for All", It is not possible to achieve financial inclusion and prosperity for people if we do not make efforts to communicate with people in their own languages.

I definitely support doing events in Colombia in Spanish. :colombia:


Mi opinión es que en Colombia es súper crucial hacer los eventos en el idioma local para la gente local. :colombia:

La misión de Celo es "Inclusión Financiera y Prosperidad para Todos", No es posible alcanzar la inclusión financiera y la prosperidad de las personas si no hacemos esfuerzos para comunicarnos con las personas en sus propios idiomas.

Definitivamente apoyo para hacer eventos en Colombia en español. :colombia:

4 Likes

Also is super important the local currency:

1 Like

WHY I AM AGAINST THIS PROPOSAL, AND SO SHOULD YOU.

Coming from a Colombian indigenous community, it is an odd case I’ve been immersed now in a few Blockchains projects’s forums, for my thesis, while being part of much older pre-web2 hackerspaces.

I am not here to be a troll, but we need some thoughts to be provoked:

  • CELO should not finance more party-makers than engineers and social inovators.
  • LatAm needs more social-technologists (hackers) than NFT makers.
  • The 2000’s “internet community” sense is been reapropriated by web3 as a dystopic creators-consumers mass now, 20 years later.
  • 90k per hackaton? when the mediators are just “git clone” and “yarn run” the alredy open-sourced celo-compose or celo-web3-stacks? 90k can bootstrap one-year companies in Latam!!
  • Past CELO hackatons already brought controversies, as some $100k winners barely had a git commit.
  • One million and a half brazilian reais ($240k) to run social media? you can buy a dedicated agency for daily work for 5 years.
  • What is the sense of doing “Instagram lives” { sorry, why endorse Meta’s platforms-as-vigilance first? }, or Twitter lives, when this lives today dont pass 5 people beyond the invited’s crews.
  • I am really afraid the one-million-dollars Mila-proposal are going to benefit just her NTF-makers friends-of-friends, while reading their discord.
  • $100/hour is a mockery, in a place where the fulltime-month salary (160h work) is around $200. Of course many of her new “friends” want a piece of the cake.
  • This party-first approach are creating a barrier within (far from expensive conferences) purposeful latam on-the-ground innovators. And they do exist!
  • There is a “prosperity as luxurious” aesthetics been performed that creates an aversion on the technologists/hackers scene where I presented the exciting cStables.
  • I did read Eisenstein book and it is sad that the Carbon-Credit market is full of mercenaries far from the real preoccupation with our sacred forests, and Celo should be very careful to avoid green-washing involvements.

We do want -and need- financial inclusion and new fair FinTechs and platforms! My suggestion would rather to endorse Federated Ambassadors/Leads per country (rather than One Queen), with the role of finding and stimulating good projects (many already happening and struggling to survive) to finance, pushing the Celo web3 stack and incubating them into the ecosystem, rather than making new parties that -maybe- are going to enable the right people to meet to -maybe- build something useful.

6 Likes

Hey everyone, I had not had the opportunity to make myself known and I think that this is the first step to let people know what can I contribute to this proposal.

I’m Cristobal Pereira, CEO of Colledge (previously know as Blockchain Academy Chile) and Director of Blockchain Summit Latam.

I have been working on several projects since 2015, the year that I started in Crypto and I have not stopped since then.

At 2018 I saw that a lot of people didn’t understand anything about crypto and blockchain, and I started a mission to let everyone in Latin America knows about this amazing technology. I start organizing Blockchain Summit Latam in Chile, and after that we move it to Colombia, Mexico and this year in Panama with more tan 1,200 attendees, +130 speakers, and +40 companies.

In 2019 I start educating people with Blockchain Academy Chile, and in 2021 we start working with Celo creating educational material in Spanish for developers. This year Celo believed in us and we created the first Incubator program focus on web3 for Latin America where we had 70 proposal and 6 where selected to participate in the program. This year also we change our name to Colledge and we have more than 5,000 students in our academy.

Also we have run more than 30 hackathons since 2018, physically and virtually, with more than 2,500 participants, and 50 projects presented.

I have doing podcast, speaking in different events, teaching in high schools, and a lot more work with the objective of let people know about crypto, blockchain and Celo.

I believe in this project, as I believe in the Latin American talent… but we need to let real people knows about it, we need to focus on developers and also in users. We have a big opportunity to promote this ecosystem with education and opportunities for all.

This will not be just another project to take pictures and show that “we are” doing something, it will be a project that will really show testimonies of people who really had a radical change in their lives, and that for me is the focus of this proposal.

If you want to know more about me, you can check my social media here https://beacons.page/cristpereirag

7 Likes

Hi everyone!

It’s a honor to join this community! Following on Cristobal’s post, I believe that purpose-driven people whom can delivery most expressive impacts. Please allow me to introduce myself. I’m a passionate Biologist, entrepreneur and developer of an array of qualified and pioneering initiatives in the field of impact businesses, venture philanthropy and sustainable development projects with over 20 years of experience, together with +600 local, traditional and indigenous peoples communities, across the Brazilian Amazon. My strengths are based on listening, collaboration, design, strategy and management, and in order to make collaborative dreams and vision become a reality, I found myself also as an effective fundraiser, securing multi-year, multi-million dollar resources from family offices, development financial institutions, corporations, foundations and government institutions in the Americas, Europe and Asia.

Always through collaborative processes, I have been developing new businesses and innovation ecosystems to support action-oriented environmental and social initiatives, providing disruptive solutions, organizational models and opportunities to engage national and international communities, organizations, governments, NGOs and traditional communities, in impact businesses and venture philanthropy initiatives.

I’m also a cofounder and CEO of Impact Bank - an impact-driven banking platform that enables the unlock and flow capital towards changemakers and organizations. Impact Bank is providing end-to-end financial and non-financial services to strengthen their economy.

As one of the cofounders of Booma Dream Ventures - a sinthropy venture studio based in Brazil, I’m learning that the coordinated development of impact businesses can accelerate systemic changes.

I also learned a lot as (former) CEO of Welight - a hybrid organization, certified B-Corp, member of the Worldwide Grantmaker Initiatives Support and the UN Global Compact; based in Brazil and UK, and; focused on leveraging donor-impact maker relationship. I’m also a co-founder at Ritual, that develops and implements cultural initiatives. Im also honored to collaborate as a senior consultant at the Amazon Sustainable Foundation and Sustainable Development Solutions Network-Amazon for innovation, entrepreneurship and financial mechanisms. As an advisory member of Instituto A Gente Transforma, I’m constantly learning how we can use the design to deliver social transformation through impact businesses.

Over the past years I’ve developed projects for Google (USA), InterAmerican Development Bank (USA), Mitsubishi Corporation (JPN), World Bank (USA), Brazilian Development Bank (BRA), British Council/Newton Fund (UK), USAID (USA), Schneider Electric (BRA), Coca-Cola (BRA), Marriott International (BRA), Sustainable Amazonas Foundation (BRA), A Gente Transforma (BRA), Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget - SCA (Sweden), Fallon (UK), Amata (Brazil), Enjoy This (UK), among others.

Sharing my deepest feelings, the most exciting and beautiful thing in my journey by now is that by being aligned with my values and principles, only truthful and impactful initiatives opens up in my path.

I believe that this proposal is one of them and is a relevant one, which can collaborate to the development of impactful blockchain-based solutions to the most pressure problems across LatAm.

4 Likes