If you are actively interested in discussing charity projects on the blockchain, then I guess this is the place to do it!
I havnt been too active recently - explained below - but I have been thinking a bit recently;
I am imagining a charitable branch that supports those in very poor economies who are able to show the good work they are doing.
@muzito08 is the example that is currently inspiring me but Im sure there are plenty more.
It would be good to create an updateable list of who these people are so that we can easily encourage the community to support them, champion them, reward them and advise them on how best to document the charitable work they are doing.
I think if this were developed in to a functioning concept then it would be an attractive in-road for wealthy west!rners who can probably see no worth in being part of a poorly-paid blogging platform, but who might be considerably more inspired if they can actively support those in need.
Faith in charities has been damaged over the past couple of decades by stories of mismanagement and corruption, but imagine instead of asking people to give away their money, instead they INVEST their money in a cryptocurrency, and either delegate it to a charity, or personally oversee who they are funding by getting actively involved in the community.
Many people in more priveliged societies have a desire to support those from needier backgrounds and this platform offers amazing potential for that to happen in a decentralised, empowering way. The accounts of community leaders in needy communities will become stronger, and in order to continue recieving support, they will have to continue showing evidence of the positive impact they are having.
Its not completely ideal. There is still room for misleading evidence and corruption, but this is something that will always be a possibility in the human race, and we should have faith that as a community we can use our intuition, and guide our focus towards truly positive, transformative projects.
When I first came to the blockchain (for me it was steemit back in August 2017) I was initially a bit disturbed by how essentially we were paying each other to be nice to one another. 'If you say a nice thing, I'll pay you for it'. At first I was very synical having already felt repulsed by much of what social media has done to peoples 'like' addiction and false personas, but I carried on because the idea of being financially rewarded for my creativity was too tempting to avoid. After a while I began to leave nice comments because I would sometimes get a big upvote from someone and also it helped to gain followers. I was playing the game. But something strange happened to me.... After a while I began to feel genuine positivity from these interactions. I started realising that my encouraging words were having a positive impact on people (even when I felt I had exaggerated about how good I thought their work was, or even downright lied that I liked it!) Equally, I was dubious about the intent of some of the nice comments I recieved, but never-the-less, I found it encouraging, and I even began to make friends with people. I realised that something alchemical was taking place in me. I was being TRAINED to be nice! Imagine? My jaded, cynical mind was starting to see the best in people and then tell them so. It felt so damn good, that after a while the money hardly mattered anymore! It was mostly a pittance anyway, and something far more rewarding was happening. I was becoming a better person. It started to leak in to my daily life and over the last few years I think I have realised the power of selfless positivity, and begun to transform it in to something genuine, insightful and uplifting (not the original manipulative half-truths!).
Recently with the global Covid thing, I took a huge backstep from life, work, creativity and even computers. Finally after all these years of living, I was ready to check in to some spiritual teachings and this inner journey has been incredibly transformative again (how many times will I transform in this life? will I ever stop transforming even after death?). I love the works of Eckhart Tolle and I have also been practising some buddhist meditation and reading some sufi stuff, some soami and yogi stuff, and listening to cool cats like ken wilbur and the rebel wisdom channel.
Man, the journey just keeps going....
And recently Ive started wondering how I want to interact with the world (now that I plan not to persue any wild egoic dreams and delusions!) and the blockchain is a place where I saw such positive transformation in myself and also a potential to spread wealth and empowerment to places where they are very short on these crucial things.
Im not a very technical person, and unfortunately not a very consistent person either, but I hope that I can do my little bit to spread uplifting ideas and encourage love and positivity in this world.
Those are just some incoherent thoughts that Im jamming with at the moment. Let me know if you want to discuss anything further.
Basil x
Hi there Basil, I can just excitedly bumped into the charity community seconds ago after asking people in my I Am Alive Community last night to see if there is a home on the Hive for Charities and here I Am! 😀
I have just read your article and can absolutely relate to many (MANY) points, but the main one that I want to focus on here is the room and acceptance on the Hive for charity work/promotion/petitions/info/etc.
I am in either way and I look forward to more interaction with you guys here and to try to help get more than the 6 subscribers, after all, aren't there supposed to be tens of thousands of People on the Hive? I'm new here- 3 weeks so far...
I look forward to speaking with you soon. 😊
hey nice to meet you :)
I only just recently joined this charity community as well. Im sure it will pick up more followers if there is more activity here.... but I think in the mean time it would be really cool to discuss the possibilities of Charity via the Blockchain. Its such an exciting, innovative and revolutionary community here that the possibilities are potentially world changing!
Im still brewing on this idea of a Decentralised Application (Dapp) and Im hoping to make a post about it soon so your feedback would be welcome! Im not a developer but I think putting out forward thinking ideas is a good start, and who knows there might be some philanthropists out there who would like to make a positive difference in peoples lives.
Tell me more about your interest in charity work/promotion/petitions/info/etc.
Do you have specific projects in mind?
Hi there Basil, thanks so much for the reply and great to meet you too!
I'm only new to Hive- completely new to blockchain/crypto/everything Dapp and have only been on here for 3 weeks after discovering THE WHOLE universe 4 weeks ago, so not really sure how it would/could work at this stage...but I'm definitely willing to have a go figuring it out! (with help ofcourse...lol...)
So I have really good friends running charities- There's my friend Tracey who created Testigo Africa in Tanzania- https://testigoafrica.org/
And then Damian who created IAPF- https://www.iapf.org/thankrangers/ and then there's John and Gill Dalley at Soi Dogs in Thailand https://www.soidog.org/content/john-and-gills-story
And there's so many others- both humanitarian and animal based that I support.
And since there's been massive flooding in India just the other day which has displaced millions of people, and then an earthquake in Tibet last night, we have those charities that are in in for the duration and then others that need immediate help for the more urgent crisis that are happening almost on a daily basis due to natural disasters like these, so surely somehow, somewhere we can come up with some sort of large scale, high impact campaign initiatives to create the awareness of these charities and their needs....?
Not sure if you have heard of Nathan Mars? He's huge on Hive and twitter, so I'm going to have a chat to him and see if he's got any suggestions...
We have this massive, global platform with so many awesome, creative and talented people and we are usually the type of people that have more compassion in our souls, so really, we should be utilising our hearts, talents and skills to do something like this.
What do you think?
I think the user base on HIVE is very small compared to the big global names like twitter etc. so a high impact global campaign would definitely need to be directed outwards from this community (especially for tackling immediate large scale crises). HOWEVER this is early days for HIVE as a platform and sewing the right seeds now could lead to some impactful progression down the line.
The wonderful thing about delegating staked crypto currency is that you could effectively LEND the POWER of your money to a charity without having to actually give anything away. This could potentially be a revolution in the way that everyday folk get to contribute to the spread of global wealth and the empowerment of those in need. Its just theoretical at the moment, but I'll see if I can put my ideas down more succinctly in the next few days.
Also check out this list from @achimmertens of some projects worth supporting. https://hive.blog/hive-149312/@achimmertens/chary-whitelist-charity-projects-which-are-worthy-to-be-supported
He also started CHARY coin (and this charity community) so he's another good person to be discussing all this with!
Cheers thanks
Just having a look now.
Ive put up some initial ideas now! see what you think : )
https://hive.blog/charity/@basilmarples/hive-charity-dapp-initial-thoughts-discussion-please
Just sent a response to you and tagged a few people in it and I'm going to link in your paper and my response to my blog tonight on the iamaalive community and hopefully, people will start having lightbulbs flashing in their brains and want to collaborate on this awesome project!
Thank you so much once again Basil, you've got no idea how excited I am about this! (and more desire to continue on on Hive....not to mention the amount of people that would join Hive if they knew that there was a platform like this on it.) 😀
It would be great to see more charities on Hive as I know a lot of people want their votes to do real good and it would not hurt to get the word out that we help needy people. Charity accounts do need to verify themselves with links from other sites and/or validation by trusted parties.
@pennsif used to do the #adollaraday posts where he was donating to various charities. I see @littledisciples in Venezuela as still using the tag. We could offer support to charities in various ways with our votes and still earn curation.
I am too addicted to tech to step back from it for long :)
awesome thanks for that I have followed them and upvoted them now! Im glad Im on this trail now, I can just fill my feed with people who could really use my 1cent vote :)
Have you checked out the chary tag by @achimmertens as well?
I may put some charities on auto-vote.
BTW Don't worry about upvoting my comments. If they don't get to the dust threshold it's a waste.
hehe ok I'll try not to add any more dust to the bottom of your wallet :)
Everything OK my friend?
I see you are taking care of the world. 😊
Nice to see you back
hey thanks man! good to see you too :)
Im well. Life has been strange, but also beautiful!
I hope you are ok too x x peace
I am happy that you are well.☮️ 😊
Yeah, but, how about helping those in very poor economies who are able to show their work, everyday life, village, etc ?
This is a decentralized blockchain and there are plenty of people posting from very poor economic situations and all you would have to do, would be to spend some time looking for posts, curating content, reblogging and helping peer to peer, instead of yet another form of delegation.
I do not believe in charity organisations, but in help / support from person to the other.
... I guess just using the blockchain as intended is too hard, though.
exaaaaactly Felixxx 'using the blockchain as intended is too hard' ! You've hit the nail on the head.
Not many people have the time or the interest in blogging and searching and blah blah blah, so to attract new people to the blockchain, we can maybe try to make them feel as if they are doing something good in the world, without having to actually DO much at all (except invest and delegate maybe?)
I for one am definitely too lazy and inconsistent to do a decent job of curating!
in fact I hadnt even realised that the community I just posted in is doing exactly what Im talking about already. But still, Im glad I got my thoughts out....sometimes I just have to work everything out the wrong way round ;p
Wouldn't it be better to just send 200$ to someone who needs a quick help, rather than investing 20000$ in Hive ?
I think if you find something you really 100% trust and you feel absolutely assured that the money will go towards something beneficial for a whole community, whether its food, shelter, infrastructure etc. then yeah, by all means send a packet of money. Of course it is the most direct way, and with crypto as an exchange method its easier than ever.
HOWEVER, I think what Im talking about is encouraging 'the average Joe' to INVEST their money (crucially theyre not being asked to give it away) in HIVE and know that their investment is part of a charitable support scheme which is helping those in need.
For every person who's likely to do their research and give $200 straight to a cause, theres probably thousands of people who wouldnt. If optionally delegating a fraction of a decentralised pot of money to those in need was an option for everyone, I imagine almost ANYONE with a shred of compassion would tick that box. I realise Im sounding idealist here, but surely that is part of the utopian potential of cryptocurrency. Not to mention the fact that delegation actually empowers an account, as opposed to just handing out money to be withdrawn and spent on whatever. I think thats hugely significant in terms of sustainability.
And of course, if people are staking HIVE then its good for the token, which in turn is furthering the empowerment of those who are recieving it.
Also, wouldnt it be cool if your delegation was effectively split between all the listed charity projects so that you werent necessarily choosing to give all your money to one cause? Maybe there could be options to direct more of your stake towards a project you felt particularly compassionate about, but not all of it, so that no charity gets ignored.
@achimmertens Id be interested to hear your opinions on all of this. I have only just started thinking about it, but you've actually been doing it with the chary coin