[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.
Perception of problem being solved:
Lives of African women is what it is due to lack of proper education (https://www.globalyoungvoices.com/fast-news-blog/2016/5/5/top-challenges-facing-africa-today).
It is not their choice to be firewood fetchers, peasant or farm laborers or to be industrial retail 'serfs' or 'servants'.
Cardano has adoption problem and lacks capability according to this article(https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/the-two-big-problems-facing-cardano-2021-03-17). How then will Cardano spread in Africa? Without furthering the IT gender gap?
Reasons for this approach:
Women have great influence on children and targeting girls is in fact building strong roots for growing Cardano for many years to come.
Big companies like Microsoft(source:https://www.microsoft.com/africa/4afrika/academy/), Embarcadero(https://www.embarcadero.com/development-tools-for-education), Python Olympiad(https://olympiad.org.za/programming-olympiad/) have grown quickly by targeting schools.
From this experience, as Bernard Sibanda was instrumental in spreading Embarcadero Delphi/Pascal in South African schools syllabi for high school IT training, WIMS-Cardano will penetrate this market via targeting the neglected girls first and there after spread to all.
Class coding presentation organized by Bernard Sibada in 2012
WIMS-Cardano will use Cardano's strength in Maths, Science, Haskell and problem solving and tools to give African girls opportunities for getting high end paying engineering jobs and entrepreneural ventures.
Awards from Embarcadero: Bernard Sibanda 2nd from right. Source: https://community.embarcadero.com/blogs/entry/supporting-education-in-south-africa-311
Aim is train girls to be productive practical problem solvers using Cardano strengths in this high tech world(The Haskell Road to Logic, Maths and Programming. Source:https://www.amazon.com/dp/0954300696).
Project will engage:
- engage schools, colleges and universities and their respective communities in opening girl clubs for 'WIMS-Cardano Girls Education'. Stakeholders will be involved communities, girls, educational institutions and Cardano community the funder.
Project Implementation:
We will create girls clubs in educational institutions and in some communities. These clubs will learn and compete against each other in Smart Contract development using Marlowe, Plutus and in solving community problems.
Train and monitor the facilitators and educational processes to make sure it is internally rewarding to girls, parents and involved institutions.
Participating girls will have a buy in from their families and this will even spread Cardano adoption.
The links belows are Cardano resources we will simplify and adapt to schools and colleges for training:
Cardano tools and training materials
- https://marlowe-playground-staging.plutus.aws.iohkdev.io/doc/marlowe/tutorials/index.html
- https://marlowe-playground-staging.plutus.aws.iohkdev.io/#/
- https://playground.plutus.iohkdev.io/
- https://testnets.cardano.org/en/
- https://github.com/input-output-hk/plutus
All groups will prototype and produce smart contracts one of which is WUSR depitched in the diagram below
Computer Science University Groups
These will be prepared for Pioneer cohorts run by Dr Lars by training them on plutus core inner workings using custom evented illustrations(UML) as shown below: It will be nice, challenging, never alienating but fulfilling:
The above and below illustrations shows how we will visualize the abstract Plutus core modules to help also simplify Cardano tools documentations.
The above illustration was designed by one of the Plutus Pioneer student and our project will reach out for this talent and be a platform for them to practice, produce and grow.
With this project we not only looking at external Cardano growth but also internal resources such as Plutus Pioneer talents.
Expected Outputs of the project:
- 15 girls per centre per month
- certificates of attendance(same as we use for python competitions in schools in South Africa)
- Each girl is to produce at least 2 Smart Contracts running on Cardano testnet: 1 Plutus and 1 on Marlowe same way we have made secondary students code solutions in Delphi/Pascal, Java and Python.
Expected Outcomes:
- schools, tertiary institutions and community involved appreciate and love Cardano.
- girls appreciate and love Cardano, Maths, Finance, Haskell and Plutus.
- smart contracts produced solving community problems.
What's unique WIMS-Cardano Girls Education:
- this is explode and destroy stereotypes against girls persuing engineering, maths, science careers.
- communities only think of crypto communities as dealing with finance, trading, speculation and will see Cardano ecosystem as complementary co-curricular.
- practical, realistic way to empower women using IT.
- activities are not online presentations only but practical hands on challenges on Smart Contracts on Cardano blockchain.
Solution's value for Cardano Ecosystem:
- sowing seeds for further adoption and growth in communities.
- improve Cardano's processes as all challenges faced will be documented and feedback give to refine tools.
- provide testing ground for new innovations.
- possible future skilled Cardano engineers in Africa and in the world.
Explain who will benefit.
- Cardano community will benefit: long term adoption, will have utility for communities.
- women are directly benefiting from Cardano ecosystem.
- subjects like finance, maths, IT and science will be boosted.
- parents, schools and countries involved will benefit as girls will have opportunities for further skills development.
Does your proposal primarily benefit
a) your organization or company:
WIMS-Cardano will benefit in being recognized as having a positive community contribution and this will open up opportunities for further funding and further Cardano adoption by respective governments. This will als give
something positive for Cardano to take to African governments and AU.
b) Benefit to the Catalyst community:
This will not be money, time wasted and will boost the Catalysts' effectiveness to communities apart from investment communities only.
c) Benefit to greater Cardano community:
It will contribute in expanding Cardano talent pool, adoption of Cardano current and future coming inventions.
d) Benefit to Africa
Reduce unemployment and poverty in the long run. Boost Africa with engineering skills needed.
Above all this will empower women and open their minds to Cardano technologies.
[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.
Educating Africans especially girls using Cardano Ecosystem tools and strength brings value and need of Cardano to communities and their attention become less obsessed with crypto volatility, with misconceptions that blockchain is only a financial technology.
Adoption and Cardano will result in this. Initially within 3 months 135 female students in Africa will have learnt, produced Cardano with Cardano technologies. They will have created wallets, moved assets and learn about IT security and cryptography.
Schools and their staff will also be positively changed and this will ensure Cardano growth and other coming tools and services will easily be adopted. For WIMS(Women In Move Solutions), we will have achieved one of our main objectives setout in 2018. This is a win win since we are expert professional educators and have been practically training students coding in Delphi, Scratch and Java.
[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?
Main risks are :
Problem 1: Gender discrimination misconception
Boys who normally love IT activities will feel left out and school and parents may require we take both. Some schools might even given classes due to interests as has happened before.
Solutions:
We will have to creatively adapt to environments because if this is highly adopted then it is good for every body. Another way is to let the schools know later we will have schools Cardano activities.
Problem 2: Crypto volatility and Scam fears
Many people have abandoned crypto due market crash and might strongly oppose the clubs.
Solutions:
Our approach to schools is not to say we are here to teach you blockchain, bitcoin and trading but is to teach Maths, Science, Finance and apply it in real life problem solving using plutus programing and creating strong concepts for future high paying careers as developers, engineers and finance.
It will in fact be an opportunity to meet and remove crypto misconceptions and clarify speculative vs non-speculative activities of the project.
Since students will create and move assets using Cardano wallets. We will use testnets and tADA and if on mainnet then we will use stable ADA to eliminate volatility problems.
Problem 3: Screening girls problem
We cannot take all girls as resources and time will not be available and we cannot be wasteful and take on poorly performing girls and this will lead to parents complaining. In our experience we have faced parents who pushed their children to maths and IT upper grades before children had adequate foundation.
Solutions:
We will run these clubs as extramural but will also request involvement of staff and Parents School bodies. For tertiary, it will not be that difficult than for primary schools.
We will not take students without pre-requisites skills but if say our numbers are very low then we will introduce a bridging 'pre-requisite' course that will enable any students to participate well.
Problem 4: Girls abuse
In Africa girls are mostly abused and we do not want to take things for granted as experienced professionals who have taught in Africa for years and years.
Solutions:
We will have a transparent plan to eliminate this problem before it happens because it will damage the reputation of WIMS and Cardano and even of the involved institutions.
Problem 5 : After successful training then what will happen?
Solutions: We will have participants who successfully completes the training have certificates of attendance which they all are used to but it has to be from Cardano. One of the plans is for students to produce a WIMS-Cardano Universal Rewards on blockchain so that they receive those rewards and also they have their digital certificates as NFT
Problem 6: Content versus School Content Maths, Accounting, etc
This problem is about the syllabi of content taught. Will be separate from that of that school? How will we mix grades and classes?
As experienced educators, developers and finance experts we will marry content to what that school range of registered grades teach. We know from psychology: Jerome Bruner, "a learner even of a very young age is capable of learning any material so long as the instruction is organized appropriately"(source : https://www.simplypsychology.org/bruner.html#:~:text=Bruner's%20work%20also%20suggests%20that,Piaget%20and%20other%20stage%20theorists.)
Problem 7: Cardano developers slow to release tools
This is now trend. When I started Plutus Pioneer first cohort, we were expecting to graduate with our smart contracts running on mainnet. And my years in Plutus has taught me to be patient and to be careful what we tell people.
Our training will focus on skills acquisitions and testnets and Plutus, Marlowe playground mostly. For wallets and assets, we will find a way or even improvise to drive correct relevant skills.
Problem 8: Project mismanagement, funds abuse, funds hacked, etc
We need Cardano projects experts to also be around, give advice, do random audits and release funds in milestones because every project faces implementation unforeseen challenges. We all be and take guard.
Problems that we have not stated above but will be brought later, will be treated and pro-actively dealt with as we do not want a failing project. It will jeopardize WIMS-Cardano future. We actually want this project to be self sufficient and grow to the whole world.
[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.
This will be executed 30 days from being awarded:
We will train and certify 45 girls every month. Week 2 and 3 will be a repeatation of activities of the first week but with new group of girls.
Month 1: 45 girls
Week 1 : Project Orientation and team training 15-20
Week 2 :Girls registrations and vetting for month 1 , Concurrently 3 venues Target, Johannesburg 15, Ghana 15, North West 15
Week 3 : Training, Evaluation, Practice, Feedback
Week 4: Group projects and presentation(expo)
Month 2: 45 girls
Week 1 : Review of previous Month and draw up new plan members
Week 2 :Girls registrations and vetting for month 2 , Concurrently 3 venues Target, Johannesburg 15, Ghana 15, North West 15
Week 3 : Training, Evaluation, Practice, Feedback
Week 4: Group projects and presentation(expo)
Month 3: 45 girls
Week 1 : Review of previous Month and draw up new plan members
Week 2 :Girls registrations and vetting for month 3 , Concurrently 3 venues Target, Johannesburg 15, Ghana 15, North West 15
Week 3 : Training, Evaluation, Practice, Feedback
Week 4: Group projects and presentation(expo)
Below is information about what we are having and schools will normally help us with other resources when we train in their premises. But for offices, we will be already get some assistance from sister, partner companies. I have broken down funds and indicated below what they will be used for.
We will run the project in 3 months and train and certify 135 students. First month budget and details is shown below. Also the rest of the 2 months. Each weak has outcomes to be achieved and we will need full dedication time to achieve weekly outcomes.
[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.
1 Marketing
Advertising materials: Brochures, Cards, Fliers, Banners etc
$280,00
Videos
$280,00
Local media adverts
$112,00
Marketing Agents
$2 025,00
2 Facilitators and organizers incentives
Facilitators
$3 200,00
Organizers
$756,00
3 Girls support Materials and Incentives
$13 500,00
4 Cardano Support Team and Plutus Pioneers
Plutus Pioneers
$1 200,00
Support Team
$500,00
5 Contingent Fees for unexpected
Legal
$200,00
Emergency
$500,00
Grand Total
<u>$22 553,00</u>
[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.
1
<u>Bernard Sibanda </u>
BSC Computing, BTech Education, MCP, Plutus Pioneer.
Founder of 3 companies namely :
Tobb Technologies (IT Consulting) South Africa (https://tobb.co.za),
Women In Move Solutions(Blockchain and IT - 4IR) South Africa(https://wims.io) and
ABL Tech Pty Ltd (Australian IT Consulting) Australia (https://abltech.com.au).
Software developer and Architect (14+ years), Educator(+20 years). UNISA School of computing voluntary curricula advisor member.
Cardano Plutus Pioneer student and promoter 1st, 2nd and 3rd Cohorts(2021-Current), Member of Wada Cardano(2022).
Successfully established and maintained an international community(WIMS-Cardano) with professional(teachers, nurses, developers, business people)membership from SADC countries, Ghana, Nigeria, Norway, Australia.
Established and successfully maintained WIMS-Cardano telegram(80+ members), whatsapps(40 members) with these platforms:
https://discord.com/channels/861089947909357589/861093199052668928
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernard-sibanda-04832817/
Address: 7 Gold Reef Road, Ormonde, 2190 South Africa.
Discord: wims#5274
Telegram: @WIMS2020
LinkedIn: https://za.linkedin.com/in/bernard-sibanda-04832817
Email: [email protected], [email protected]
2
<u>Hini John noel</u>
BSC accounting and finance forensic accounting and auditing
Financial innovation and business development and finance
Successfully have worked in both public and private sector.
Has raised funds for business and for developing their products.
Consulting for BT group.
Company founder too.
+10 years of experience, and 2 years with WIMS and blockchain.
One of the first member and still currect active coordinator of WIMS
Address: Reco house Glala street, Ho, Ghana
Email: [email protected], [email protected]
discord: MALITAH#3899
linkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-hini-374450103
3
<u>Onkemetse Roselyn Modise</u>
-National Diploma in Analytical Chemistry,
-Occupationally Directed Education Training and Development Level 6,
-National Diploma in Occupationally Directed Education Training and Development,
-Higher Certificate in Occupationally Directed Education and Training
Training Officer in the Chemical laboratory(2006),
Registered Assessor and Moderator with ETDP SETA(National Education Quality bordies https://www.etdpseta.org.za/education/)
+10 years experience, been with WIMS-Cardano and blockchain 2 years.
One of the first member and still currect active coordinator of WIMS
- instrumental in building and maintaining WIMS-Cardano community.
- diligently organised successful blockchain and cardano activities like creating wallets, interpreting blockchain events via our group platforms: whatsapp, telegram.
Address: 84 Milton Avenue, Orkney, 2619, Klerksdorp, North West, South Africa.
Emails : [email protected],[email protected]
LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/onkemetse-dikgole-3bb82724
Discord : omodise#0476
[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.
Yes.
We aimed this fund requested to be for 135, if we managed to get other funds then we may not need to further ask for funds, otherwise schools, high schools and universities will give us more students. Like Python schools competitions in South Africa, it is an annual event.
[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?
We will train and certify 45 girls every month. Week 2 and 3 will be a repeatation of activities of the first week but with new group of girls.
Month 1: 45 girls
Week 1 : Project Orientation and team training 15-20
Week 2 :Girls registrations and vetting for month 1 , Concurrently 3 venues Target, Johannesburg 15, Ghana 15, North West 15
Week 3 : Training, Evaluation, Practice, Feedback
Week 4: Group projects and presentation(expo)
Month 2: 45 girls
Week 1 : Review of previous Month and draw up new plan members
Week 2 :Girls registrations and vetting for month 2 , Concurrently 3 venues Target, Johannesburg 15, Ghana 15, North West 15
Week 3 : Training, Evaluation, Practice, Feedback
Week 4: Group projects and presentation(expo)
Month 3: 45 girls
Week 1 : Review of previous Month and draw up new plan members
Week 2 :Girls registrations and vetting for month 3 , Concurrently 3 venues Target, Johannesburg 15, Ghana 15, North West 15
Week 3 : Training, Evaluation, Practice, Feedback
Week 4: Group projects and presentation(expo)
[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?
135 girls will have graduated with certificates of attendance after 3 months training and will know how to create smart contracts using Plutus and Marlowe on Cardano blockchain.
At least 2 provinces will have successfully taken part in the training. Communities involved will know WIMS , Cardano and services they do.
[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.
No
New one.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating
4 Quality Education
5 Gender Equality
8 Decent work and economic growth
10 Reduced inequalities