RefugeCities
- Pre-Seed
RefugeCities is a blockchain based e-commerce and investment platform to harness refugees´ economic potential through business. It enables refugees to make and sell handmade fashion, apparel and crafts online and allows people, charities and businesses to make investments to refugees of their choice and get financial returns instead of donations.
Please view RefugeCities Pitch Demo by Clicking HERE
While refugee crisis continues to surge the humanitarian space, 80% of the world population is willing to help the refugees. People, governments and international agencies give aid to help. Unfortunately, 30% of this is lost in corruption, another estimated 10% goes to charity costs. Half of the refugee population are women and girls, less empowered and more economically disadvantaged. Despite the huge efforts, poverty and immense need continues to reign in the world of refugees. They however present a 65 million person wasted economic potential as they have the energy, skills and the yearn to make their lives better themselves.
As the technology advances, the e-commerce growth is estimated at $4 trillion by 2020. The market however each day is demanding more value. Handmade products demand has grown due to consumers´ desire to connect with makers and giving back. Furthermore, we all love to know what we spend goes to make a difference. What if we tried solving refugee crisis through business?
Giving the market an opportunity to invest in itself is a self-driving force and we believe this would be the success tip. Blockchain help secure our system and maintain transparent, efficient and traceable transactions.
- At least 10000 refugees (80% women and adolescent girls) from the five focus countries selling through our platform and getting investments in the first year.
- Confidence in and performance of our products in the market determined by the average amounts of orders and how it increases according to the demand.
- Creation of digital economy among refugees through use of digital currency which is much more secure in transactions than the physical money.
- Investments on refugees to be economically active.
- Strong partnerships in financial circle, supply chain and with the corporate and governmental sector
Number of sellers on the platform - 10000 refugees selling through our platform.
Amount of average orders - Confidence in and performance of our products in the market.
Number and use of digital cards - Digital economy in refugee camps
- Adolescent
- Adult
- Old age
- Low-income economies (< $1005 GNI)
- Female
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Europe and Central Asia
- US and Canada
- Consumer-facing software (mobile applications, cloud services)
- Digital systems (machine learning, control systems, big data)
- Something so new it doesn’t have a name
The use of blockchain technology in RefugeCities does not only enhance security, efficiency and transparency but also ensures traceability of the impact that both the investors and buyers are creating in the lives of refugees. The involvement of blockchain in digital signatures and digital money ensures no fraud. This is also intended to promote a digital economy which is secure in places like refugee camps.
The investment aspect of our solution adds value to the traditional donations and contributes towards a more inclusive economy that truly creates financial inclusion to the most deserving refugees.
The technology is essentially helping people help refugees help themselves. This creates an involvement of everyone in around the world who is a lover of our products and also change. This also brings together people who want to create impact through business. All the purchases, investments and transactions done through our platform are at all the time involving different types of people at the same time with one final mission of making a better world for refugees. Our blockchain technology will use distributed ledger shared and synchronized across network spread across multiple people involved.
Our platform will be available online and later as mobile application freely available to anyone who wishes to use it for free.
- 1-3 (Formulation)
- United States
Our primary plan is to get into an accelerator program that would introduce us further into the technology market and amplify our networks.
We plan to start fundraising and meeting venture capitalists in the coming months to develop our MVP before doing an ICO to get into the market the beginning of next year.
With the ICO and product already functional we are sure of raising enough money to take RefugeCities to 5 different countries in Europe Africa and Canada by mid 2018. After we hit the market we are sure to generate enough revenue to operate on within the first year of operation.
- Technical lead that we plan to hire at the right time
- Financial base which we plan to build in the next coming months
- Less than 1 year
- 6-12 months
- 3-6 months
- Technology Access
- Human+Machine
- Financial Inclusion
- Income Generation
- Future of Work
Applying to solve will enable me enter a huge network of like minded think tanks who will effectively help me execute my solution and help change the history of refugees.
I would like to benefit from the mentorship and training opportunities offered by solve, access financial base to develop my MVP and further my solution into a reality, access most skilled mentors and develop a great Board with experience in refugee issues helping realize the SDGs for the refugees.
We do not have partners yet. Plan to develop in the coming months
Etsy.com
Handmade at Amazon
Most apparel, handmade and fashion e-commerce services
AID:Tech
Co-founder and CEO