UNICEF Giga NFTs to connect schools in developing countries to the Internet

Developed countries often take the ubiquity of the Internet for granted. But the truth is that about 2.9 billion people still lack access to the global Internet.

Data provided by UNICEF highlights that the majority of these people who lack the internet reside in underdeveloped countries, and children are still disadvantaged due to the lack of internet access in local schools.

A UNICEF-led initiative is addressing this dilemma in a new way through a joint project with the International Telecommunication Union that led to the creation of GIGA in 2019.

Gerben Kijne, Director of Blockchain Products at Giga, explained the company’s Project Connect initiative at the Blockchain Expo in Amsterdam. Giga has made great strides in connecting schools to the Internet in developing countries around the world.

The first step in this process was to plan and connect the schools through Project Connect. Giga uses machine learning to scan satellite imagery to locate schools on an open source map. To date, it has identified more than 1.1 million schools in 49 countries and contact data for a third of these schools.

After identifying a large number of schools that need access to the Internet, the next step in the process was to create a new initiative to raise funds from the world of blockchain, cryptocurrency, and NFT.

Speaking to Cointelegraph after his keynote address at the RAI Congress Center in Amsterdam, Kijne dismantled the Giga Patchwork Kingdoms initiative. With NFTs on the rise in popularity over the past couple of years, Giga sought to make the most of this madness by experimenting with NFT-led fundraising in March 2022.

Giga has teamed up with Dutch artist Nadia Bremmer to launch a set of 1,000 procedurally generated NFTs minted on the Ethereum blockchain. The NFTs were produced using Giga School data to represent those with and without an internet connection.

The public sale of NFT raised about 240 ether (ETH) in total, worth $700,000, which went directly to connecting schools to the Internet. Kijne admitted that the value raised was secondary to exploring a different type of charitable fundraising.

“I think NFTs also provide a really interesting use case. One of the things we’re starting to look at is what does philanthropy look like for the next generation of people? Because if you go to UNICEF now and donate, I don’t even know what you’re going to get, maybe like” an email Thank you” or something.

Kijne believes that NFTs can provide a closer link to donations, highlighting their use to track the impact of donations through NFT ownership of a given school and to monitor when collected money is ‘disbursed’ to pay for online connectivity.

Many lessons have been learned from the NFT-based fundraising initiative. As Kijne explained, building a pre-launch community may have helped bolster support. As we’ve seen in the NFT space, community members play a role, but opportunistic NFT investors are always present and looking for an opportunity to cash in on new launches.

“I think quite a few people like that joined us, and they formed one of two camps. We have the people we were targeting, Giga supporters. A lot of them bought their first ever NFT. Then the other group is the people who think, ‘Oh, NFT for UNICEF!’” Let me do that. “

Despite this fact, the project has been deemed successful and provides an intriguing use case for blockchain-based NFTs as a transparent fundraising and community building method. The March 2022 public sale sold out in three hours and raised $550,000. The additional 20 percent of the money raised came from secondary sales at OpenSea.

from San Jose News Bulletin https://sjnewsbulletin.com/unicef-giga-nfts-to-connect-schools-in-developing-countries-to-the-internet/
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