UNICEF France Starts Accepting Dai Donations to Help Fund Blockchain Projects

UNICEF France has recently started accepting donations in Dai, MakerDAO’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, to fund “bounties” and “research for open source tech and infrastructure projects,” that are set to help the “world’s most vulnerable people.”

According to an official website made to accept Dai donations, through an arm called UNICEF Ventures the organization is looking to invest in emerging blockchain projects that are working on solutions to some of “humanity’s greatest challenges.”

UNICEF Ventures has, in fact, already held vents in Mexico and Kazakhstan that focused on giving interested youth the opportunity to learn more about blockchain technology, and to help develop solutions for specific challenges their regions face.

In Mexico, the events focused on identity, payments, and tokens, while in Kazakhstan these focused on “app development for development situation,” the arm’s blockchain lead Christina Lomazzo told ETHNews.

Per the publication, Lomazzo believes work is still needed to assemble teams and encourage collaboration. Should these teams and their projects mature to become early stage start-ups, UNICEF’s Venture Fund will consider investing in them.

Lomazzo was quoted as saying:

UNICEF France has been able to accept Dai before because it is an ERC20 token, but we’re now promoting the fact that these Dai donations will help fund the blockchain development community that UNICEF Ventures is building.

UNICEF France notably started accepting cryptocurrency donations back in September of last year. It started by accepting major currencies, including BTC, ETH, XRP, XMR, and EOS. At the time Sébastien Lyon, the organization’s executive director, stated cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology “offer a new opportunity to appeal to the generosity of the public and continue to develop our operations with children in the countries of intervention.”

This wasn’t the first time the charitable organization launched a crypto-related initiative. In February, it started raising funds to help children in Syria, a country embroiled in a civil war since 2011.