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.
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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
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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.
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My opinion is that in Colombia it is super crucial to do the events in the local language for the local people. 
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.
Mi opinión es que en Colombia es súper crucial hacer los eventos en el idioma local para la gente local.
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.
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Also is super important the local currency:
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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.
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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
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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.
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Agree with you !
Stop nft please…
OK vamos a responderte en español porque según entiendo eres de Colombia y vienes de una comunidad indígena.
Todas las Blockchain realizan eventos para dar a conocer como funciona el ecosistema dar a conocer la Blockchain dar a conocer las posibilidades de desarrollo sobre ella para interactuar con los desarrolladores o los managers de los proyectos que corren sobre ella para mostrar los mecanismos de gobernanza para mostrar las formas como pueden fondear los proyectos Etc.
Aunque sería ideal no tener que incurrir en costos para realizar estas actividades, esto es utópico siempre tienes que alquilar un lugar pagar la logística pagar la la la comida a la gente le gusta sentirse bien y eso hace parte de una comunidad que construye juntos no veo el problema en que sea realicen eventos pueden haber algunas personas que no les guste asistir pero hay personas que entienden y aprenden más cuando pueden vivir físicamente y observar y darse cuenta que detrás de una Blockchain hay personas reales.
Ahora tú dices que es muy costoso pero comparado con otras Blockchain los presupuestos con los que se realizan los eventos de Celo son bajos además esos fondos vienen de las comisiones que la gente paga por usar la Blockchain y entre más eventos se hagan y más se de a conocer la Blockchain mas gente lo usar más comisiones van a haber y más fondos van a llegar de nuevo a la fundación es una economía circular no entiendo tu preocupación yo por mi parte estaría feliz que se hagan más eventos de estos en Colombia está ingresando plata al país cosa que es bueno para la economía del país.
Yo te invito aquí si tienes alguna idea o algún aporte constructivo no lo haga saber a mi me gusta hacer eventos en lugares no tan Fancy o exclusivos y eso es parte del plan empezará a realizar eventos en diferentes puntos de la ciudades y en diferentes ciudades y en pueblos y en resguardos en muchas muchas partes yo mismo he ayudado a construir comunidades comunidades que no tienen cómo acceder al dinero y que viven en la pobreza y que a través de protocolos como en impact Market han empezado a recibir algunos ingresos para subsistir y tenemos planes de ayudar a muchas más personas pero para eso tenemos que dar a conocer la Blockchain tenemos que hacer talleres de cómo usar billeteras hay que enseñarle a la gente como pueden usar los fondos como pueden conseguir fondos como alguien que quiera hacer un proyecto lo puede desarrollar y la Blockchain a través de la fundación y Grants o Hackatones entonces no ayudas de cualquier manera puedes ayudar a crear proyectos locales que ayudan al medio ambiente como Unergy como iniciativas que quieren proteger los bosques de iniciativas como Impact Market que ayuda a reducir la pobreza la verdad yo no veo el inconveniente de tener recursos para expandir el conocimiento no sólo se trata de NFTs se trata del conocimiento general
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Buenas tardes a todos,
Aquí Alejandro Glatt, entusiasta Celo México
Hace unos días durante el evento de Celo en ETH MEDELLIN presente mi nueva colección de NFTs Papayas y se tuvo un gran impacto: https://ariswap.co/item-details?item=NjM1MWEzZTY4MjhjNDYyNjUyMDAyNWVj
Porque SI a los NFTs?
Es una gran manera de involucrar a la comunidad, de hacer onboarding a quienes no están aún en el ecosistema CELO.
El tener que tener CELO en tu Wallet para comprar un NFT es un gran incentivo para tener nuevos miembros en el ecosistema
Al menos en mi experiencia y con mi colección, eso se ha logrado y me encantaría haya más colecciones y creadores en el ecosistema
Abrazo,
Alejandro Glatt
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Hi everyone!
I’m Phil, founder of DeTrash and the Recy Network. Our history as a web3 project is living proof of the positive impact of such proposal.
After launching our token on Smart Chain initially, it was thanks to Milla’s approach and the events organized by Celo on Ethereum Rio and Barcelona, that our project actually got traction. Thanks to the Celo house event and Mila’s effort we decided to fully migrate our project to Celo, had a invaluable networking that lead to real impact partnerships such as with Lovecrypto and a number of other key Celo community amazing people.
This is a very important proposal since it actually shows a concrete and effective (if we observe the impacts of events in LatAm) way of driving the expansion of Celo ecosystem regionally and Celo tokens and stables adoption.
My humble suggestion for all deciding on it would be observing what was the impact of blockchain events and initiatives such as the proposed here to Miami and NY which eventually became crypto cities.
We have the opportunity to make this happen to LatAm region as a whole in a much more cost effective manner.
Congrats on the proposal team and count on me to help in any way needed!
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Mila this is great.
Definitely have my vote. The goal should be focused on education, social impact, growth and developmen.
Focoused on not just buidlers but users as well. Introducing how to enter into the Celo ecosystem. How it can benefit the community or new users. How the different protocols currently in celo focus on the greater mission.
Always open to work with Artist to show them how they can leverage blockchain and web3 and help introduce them to Celo
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I was exploring the Celo Forum today and I found this post.
It seems like people are super grateful to win hackathons and receive grant for their projects.
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It was never said to stop hackathons. Read again the message of “DonaFlorinda”
I’m an enthusiast of the hackathon idea because that’s where 2heavens started.
Education and information are extremely important.
My view is that there are 3 major profiles:
1- Young students to engage with web3 from the beginning of their career.
2- Web2 to Web3
3 - There are many people doing a lot of cool stuff mainly in the ReFi field but some still don’t use web2 or web3 technology. In the current Celo hackathon, I saw that there are many good people, with consolidated projects, and we have a great opportunity to help them.
The hackathon is important for the 3 groups because it is the gateway to the web3 world and mainly to have Celo’s support in other programs, but for groups 2 and 3 a closest local mentorship is a differential.
I think it is important try to map out where to find each of these groups and bring more personalized support, including in Spanish and Portuguese.
I’m open to whatever you need!
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Hi everyone! I’m a Colombian lawyer and account and an enthusiastic about new technologies, like Blockchain. I want to be your crypto consultant!
I support this amazing idea. LATAM needs a strong, creative and organized DAO. I know we have a different talent and responsible people. Go ahead!
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Hello everyone,
David Casey here (Celo Scout, founder @ ReSource.Finance, NuMundo.
I’ve worked for the majority of the past 12 years in Latin America, mostly based out of Central America, and this proposal makes me excited about being a part of the Celo ecosystem.
It’s great to see @MilaRioja take the initiative to draft a proposal. It us also healthy to see spirited debate and strong points from @DonaFlorinda based on grassroots data and perception of foreign well-meaning entities coming in and throwing around money (often without local context and without the funds effectively reaching those who need it most, which is something that has persisted throughout the decades from the international NGO sector in the language of “sustainable development”).
Surely, this critical approach incorporating diverse perspectives will lead to a more well-formulated, well-informed, and allocation-efficient proposal.
I strongly believe in the mobile-first emerging markets thesis for driving Celo adoption, and think that energy should be focused narrowly in line with this thesis, focused on practical applications for crypto in LatAm such as remittances, mobile payments, fiat ramps, micro-credit and undercollateralized lending (and NOT competing with Polygon, Solana, Avalanche etc. on NFT’s, metaverse, GameFi and the like). Local involvement from the grassroots Colombian community to craft the proposal would surely enrich it and get buy-in from key stakeholders.
This article from @camiinthisthang very pertinently expressed the opportunity that the entire web3 space is missing right now in Latin America. The Deadend of Eurocentric Crypto — camiinthisthang
Look forward to supporting this proposal!
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I Never Said “DonaFlorinda” says “Stop Hackatons”… I only show a post that I find exploring the forum and people seem grateful for winning, and I think there is a lot of post like this one. This is really nice because when you have people happy to work inside the Celo Blockchain you have a strong community and maybe the firs product of people is not a super product, but with the funds they win they can hire a good developer and make upgrades to the product.
Maybe “DonaFlorinda” says Hackaton too expensive and not too much stricts with quality, for further Hackatons the people in charge of doing that I think make sure this things change and every day the criteria is getting hard.