Sustainable digital community

The project is addressed to solve hunger levels and lack of regular income in rural communities located in Yucatán, México. They have some ways to produce organic food at their backyard for self-consumption but have no way to sell surplus. Due to their social circumstance, many of them neither have formal education nor any type of training to contribute to formal economy. They are mostly disengaged of today’s digital society.

We are a group of freelance IT and logistics specialists. We have plans to upgrade a solution we have that is being used to move packages between head offices, branches, and customers. We will create a platform to develop sustainable digital communities with the ability to produce, promote, sell, and distribute local produced food.

The main idea is to create “self-living and growing communities” supported by the digital solution, sharing relevant information while respecting local traditions. 

Mexico’s poverty levels are extremely high. 43% of total population belongs to “poverty” and “extreme poverty” segments (family income of less than $US 150 and $US75 per month, respectively). Current country population is 128 million, so more than 55 million people suffers from the lack of basic resources.  

I live in Merida, Yucatan. Population is 2.3 million people. 41%, 940k of them belongs to poverty sector.

Many of the families living under those conditions are rural. A good number of them have a backyard where some food production is viable.  They use that capacity for self-consumption and usually have lemon, orange, and papaya trees, among other species. Because they do not have a way to sell what they produce, surplus becomes spoiled.  This is a dead-end road, where there is neither no possibilities to find a job nor a way to integrate themselves to formal economy. If developed side of our society does not provide a way for those people to raise income levels, they will be condemned to be poor their entire life. 

The main idea is to stimulate rural home organic food production and distribution through the following strategies:

• Create a digital platform to manage all interactions within a sustainable community for producers and buyers.
• Provide all digital resources needed for production, sales, and distribution activities.
• Offer on-line training, course path and performance indicators to be used by community members and volunteers helping in the process. There is a good number of schools and students willing to participate in solving hunger and poverty levels.
• Promote local food consumption within rural/urban places.

Digital platform will be based on today’s tools to work with basic smart phones and web interfaces.  Any person willing to build their own “sustainable community” will be able to use the solution. The economics for the app will be based on fare product and transaction cost, including delivery. Nearby producers/consumers will be stronger than those located far away from each other. Any person with quantities of product to be offered will be able to join the community. They will also be able to be trained in how to increase production levels, the economics involved in pricing, distribution and quality levels required by consumers.  

The solution is addressed to serve every family home that is needing to have food for self-consumption and create opportunities to generate income from surplus production. As of today, I have participated in several projects to identify people needs and define proper strategies. I participated in a “urban lab” promoted by UN (United Nations) to define education strategies to accomplish 2030 UN sustainable goals. That was held at the university I work for. Several well-respected institutions and schools participated. As part of our conclusions regarding our educational system, we found there is a need to improve teaching techniques to be more meaningful for students. We proposed to upgrade school programs by teaching:

• Biology, cultivating some products easy to seed, grow and harvest. Photosynthesis, Plant nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, etc.), pollination.  
• Human Health by preparing and consuming appropriate, organic foods (produced at the school). Vitamins, proteins, importance of hygiene. Use and disposal of water.
• Local values and culture, preparing typical food according to their region.
• Disseminate knowledge to their parents to produce at home for self-consumption and/or generate income.
• Help communities to interact between members to sell or exchange their products.
• Community identity by empowering them to be productive at their places instead of expel them to migrate to other places, regions or countries.   

I am also participating with a group of professionals that are teaching people under sever hunger circumstances on how to produce food for self-consumption. Some of them are starting to have some surplus. We are on the process to create a distribution channel. Several members of the group are training them on production of sustainable organic foods. One member of the group is working with them with the concept of “savings” and “self-financing”. I am participating with this group to integrate what we concluded at United Nations urban lab.  

I also work with other people rising funds to provide groceries to families in need.

Professionally speaking, I am dedicated to logistic complex operations. I work with a team of IT freelance specialists. We have a complex IT solution that helps financial institutions to move documents among corporate offices, branches, and customer places. We are integrated with a huge team delivery drivers. Our solution coordinates and controls every request to move contracts, buy/sell stock instructions, and any other document needed. Our app controls SLA’s (Service Level Agreements). 98% of every package must be delivered within two hours or less to its destination. All document’s flow is all controlled using the app. It integrates corporate IT platforms, customer’s IT equipment’s and delivery driver’s smart phones.

Our plan is to upgrade our digital solution to be used by local leaders willing create a sustainable community to produce, sell and distribute organic foods.

The solution will be addressed to provide a digital platform to promote current backyard food production and stimulate growth through the creation of a sales and distribution digital channel. This will help with the interaction between rural producers and city buyers to place orders, fulfill and distribute products.

Production stimulation will be driven with the integration of several resources to the digital platform, including training videos, technical information and supply sources, among others. Producers will keep track of their own training path according to products and selected production method.

Buyers will have access to products offered. They will place orders, track deliveries and provide feedback regarding product and service quality.

Delivery will be performed by persons registered in the digital community. They will serve as a direct link between producers and buyers and will receive a fee for every order they serve. Prices and fees will be fare for every community participant.

People willing to rise funds will be able to collect money and use it to deliver groceries to families in need. Every family that receives some help will be invited to join the production community.

Our solution is aligned to provide digital access to people in need for food and income. We are backed by strong digital abilities as well as good understanding of local, rural communities in Yucatan peninsula. We are in a good position to integrate single efforts performed by local leadership to empower themselves and create more economy. The day we reach the target to create an income of $US500 per month for 55 million people living in poverty, Mexico’s GDP will grow 26% and move from position #15 to position #13 in the list of most developed countries of the world.

We selected a Prototype Stage. However, we have a mix of concepts that creates kind of special stage for our solution. The facts are:

• We are professionals dedicated to digital, logistic solutions with a fully functional IT platform. To request service, collect and deliver documents and packages.  
• We are working with several instances to help and promote the development of sustainable communities. None of those efforts are considering a digitalization of the activity they are promoting today. The group is working with more than 60 families.
• We are working with other people to fund raising and deliver groceries to families in need. They have delivered +/- 1500 grocery packages to families over the past 6 months.
• We consider our app can be easily upgraded with several modules we have developed through time for other purposes. 

The digital solution by itself it is quite simple at the beginning. Databases, communications, android/IOS apps, web interfaces, etc. Not big deal. Once usage is growing it will integrate blockchain technologies to handle payments, savings, and loans within community members.  Its strength is grounded with the integration of human need and desire to prosper, people's awareness willing to help others together with feasible technologies. It takes advantage of what many communities are starting to do today. They are organizing by their own in simple ways to trade surplus food they produce. We will take advantage of all those initiatives to provide a platform to digitally interact and thrive.

 It will be to provide a friendly and powerful environment to promote the integration of new community members as well as the emergence of new, independent communities. Knowledge will be shared within the ecosystem and among others. Solution growth will be organic and autonomous. 

As of today, we are serving several hundreds of customers with thousands of services per month. They use digital services we provide as a contractor for a delivery company that handles vehicles and drivers.

Upgraded solution will be targeted to another segment. At the beginning will serve a group of producers and buyers of 80-120 members.

We think we can reach a 500-member mark within one year.

Working properly with communities we can hit a target of several thousand people and more important, having created several autonomous communities.

We will be measuring:

• Number of communities under progress
• Number of active producers on every community
• Producer stage (under training, basic production of small quantities, etc).
• Average sales per producer, per month.
• Average sales per community.
• Market feedback related to products and delivery service.

Full Time Staff 2

Contractors 4

I have a degree in computer science and MBA. I used to work for large international corporations like Nabisco, Seiko Epson Corp, as well as other large Mexican companies. I have had the chance to work on every Mexican state, knowing and understanding local cultures. I used to work for one of the largest Latin American fertilizer producers. That gave me the chance to know and understand several aspects of food production. From large scale sites to small pieces of land used for self-sustaining production, on every stat, on every region of the country.   I moved to Yucatan peninsula 16 years ago to participate in several logistic projects. Now I am dedicated to promoting logistic consultant services. I am also teacher at Universidad Modelo teaching to undergraduate and graduate classes. I am collaborating with several teams that are promoting sustainable food production techniques.

My brother has more than 30 years of experience on IT. Together with a team of IT freelancers, they developed several applications, pieces or modules thar are being used on different platforms. As of today, my brother developed the solution we are running to serve two companies of the financial sector. Those apses are not public, they are for specific logistic purposes. 

The purpose of the project is to build self-empowered communities. People is reluctant to be led by foreigners. So, local groups need to be guided by well known members of their area. Those leaders need to be trained and supported to create their own abilities. They will lead their community and insert it into a collective of similar ones across the region. 

We are sure there is a huge need to work with solutions to solve poverty. It is a matter of sustainability for the whole humanity, not only to those in need. We need to build bridges between developed countries and well-respected institutions together with countries and regions under development. Mexico and Yucatan peninsula are good examples of how a region can work toward evolution, using modern technologies. We still have a lot of work to do, but I am sure that we (our group and myself) are well prepared to contribute to build those bridges properly. We have been grown having one foot on each side of the economy. We are sure we can go far away having MIT solve partnering with us to spread this solution to other regions and countries. 

We have no doubt that we will have success locally. We are well positioned; we have a successful business model for a specific solution, and we know how to create digital applications with strong technical foundation and practical way to use them.

We are looking for support to grow the solution in Mexico and other countries.  

We would like to partner with organizations like ONU to work on sustainable development goals, with FAO to help to reduce hunger and health problems generated from the lack of healthy food and any organization willing to increase the scope of work of our solution. 

We would like to partner with organizations like ONU to work on sustainable development goals, with FAO to help to reduce hunger and health problems generated from the lack of healthy food and any organization willing to increase the scope of work of our solution. 

I think we are qualified for this price, considering that we live in a region full of Mayan descendent people with the need to integrate to modern society, having respect for their own beliefs. 

We are IT professionals. I am proud for being one of the first generations that contributed to digitalization of Mexican economy using HP 3000 series computers together with other applications with plotters, laser printers and first generation of personal computers. I will be incredibly happy to receive any kind of support from HP to help to digitalize that segment of society that will remain in the same way unless we do something to change that situation.  

We are qualified for this price because many rural homes are led by women. Women are more responsible toward kids and the health at home. There is an alcoholism issue in rural environments, mostly caused by men and creating suffering conditions for women and kids. Any support we receive to help Mayan women in Yucatan peninsula will be of great satisfaction. 

We are extremely interested on this price. It will be greatly beneficial to integrate AI to identify conditions that promotes the growth in the number of producers, the number of products, what the market accept best, what do not.  What are the conditions that boost interest to create successful communities? What changes are needed to the model to accomplish it? Every region has their own circumstances. Applying AI to social science will be very helpful. 

With no doubt, integration to the use of blockchain technology to handle transactions, savings and community financing will be a huge differentiator for the application and for the result of the implementation of the solution.