UNICEF launched a cryptocurrency fund and is accepting donations in Bitcoin and Ethereum. The initiative has been rolled out to fund open-source technology benefiting children and young people around the world.
UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, announced they are launching a crypto fund to, as per the announcement “receive, hold and distribute donations of Bitcoin and Ethereum in its aim to back open-source technology for children around the world.”
On Wednesday, UNICEF said that the Cryptocurrency Fund will be among the first of United Nations organizations that will be given benefactions as are cryptocurrencies and it will allocate in the same digital currency form.
The United Nations Children’s Fund is the association dubbed the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund and it was created by the United Nations General Assembly on 11 December 1946, to provide emergency food and healthcare to children and mothers in countries that had been devastated by World War II.
The organization added the first donation to the UNICEF Cryptocurrency Fund that came from the Ethereum Foundation and per their words “will benefit three grantees of the UNICEF Innovation Fund.”
It said the three recipients who are to be awarded with the initial donations are Prescrypto, Atix Labs and Utopixar. Their aim is to focus on the sectors of “prescription tracking, matching investors and those needing funding, and community tokens and engagement.”
The executive director of the Ethereum Foundation Aya Miyaguchi told recently when speaking at the DevCon event that 100 Ether, worth about $18,000 at its current price, has been sent to the UNICEF via the new partnership. She said:
“If digital economies and currencies have the potential to shape the lives of coming generations, it is important that we explore the opportunities they offer. Together with UNICEF, we’re taking action with the Crypto Fund to improve access to basic needs, rights, and resources.”
Also, UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore said that that this deal “is a new and exciting venture for UNICEF.”
The UNICEF Cryptocurrency Fund is now going to act as a UN children agency’s latest push to adopt blockchain technology for “bigger goals”.
Earlier this year, UNICEF was negotiating with the government of Kyrgyzstan to use blockchain in order to provide internet access to schools in the country via the so-called Project Connect initiative.
Around the ending of the last year, UNICEF said it was investing $100,000 in six blockchain startups regarding the solving of the “world worthy” challenges via blockchain, scaling from healthcare delivery transparency to managing finances and resources.
The head of policy at the Charities Aid Foundation Rhodri Davies said:
“The initial excitement about currencies using blockchain technology in the aid sector had delivered smaller windfalls than had been hoped. It’s been a lot slower than people might have expected two or three years ago.”
He added successes of the cryptocurrency donation model were pretty much limited to internet-based charities as are entities as, for example, is Wikimedia or the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The principal adviser at Unicef Innovation, Christopher Fabian, explained the initiative would “prepare the organization for the future while also maintaining safeguards built into existing donor systems.” He concluded:
“We see this as a piece of learning that we need to go through to prepare for the next decade.”
