Efficient and secure borderless humanitarian aid by Xcapit
- Argentina
- For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
While numerous humanitarian aid programs are in place, Humanitarian Cash Transfers (HCTs) distinguish themselves as exceptionally effective in supporting children and families affected by natural disasters, conflicts, severe malnutrition, or displacement as refugees, particularly in terms of restoring their dignity. However, the delivery of such aid is not without its challenges, being both expensive and operationally complex. This is the gap our solution aims to bridge.
Millions worldwide are impacted by these crises, and the necessity and impact of our approach are amplified by factors like the magnitude of disasters, the intensity of conflicts, and the depth of displacement crises. (Just to mention, today UNICEF transacts 600M USD and the World Food Program 3.3B USD, being just two of the hundreds of organizations that provide humanitarian aid).
Our strategy also helps to foster financial and digital inclusion through the provision of access to credit, digital identity tools, and insurance, all while ensuring the security of privacy and personal data.
Moreover, we are committed to generating new economic opportunities and providing a safeguard against economic shocks for workers. This includes creating quality jobs, enhancing workforce development, and promoting inclusive and achievable asset ownership, laying the groundwork for a more resilient and inclusive future.
Xcapit is reshaping the distribution of humanitarian aid by creating a blockchain-based platform for cash disbursement. This system allows governments and humanitarian agencies to transfer cash assistance to those in dire need in a secure and efficient way, ensuring a more stable and prosperous future for communities affected by poverty, conflicts, disasters, and climate change impacts. By utilizing blockchain technology, Xcapit significantly reduces transaction fees, allowing more funds to be allocated to helping vulnerable people.
Moreover, the system streamlines aid efforts by preventing duplication of work, conserving valuable resources, and ensuring that aid reaches those who are most in need, thereby guaranteeing effective and targeted support.
Xcapit's solution is especially inclusive, catering to under-resourced beneficiaries who may lack access to a bank account, passport, internet, or smartphone. It enables these individuals to engage with blockchain in a seamless manner through account abstraction, making the technology accessible even to those with feature phones or low-end smartphones. This approach eliminates the need for storage space on the user's device, an internet connection, and extensive learning to utilize the solution effectively.
In handling sensitive and private data of highly vulnerable individuals in fragile and complex environments, Xcapit ensures the utmost privacy and security. Our system does not store any sensitive information such as names, dates of birth, or biometrics, maintaining the integrity and confidentiality of all beneficiaries.
With our solution, by enabling humanitarian cash interventions to promote and oversee essential health and education-related tasks. This impacts child nutrition, vaccination, and school attendance. Families will be incentivized to complete the healthy and desirable activities, as the funds will be unlocked in their wallets after providing evidence of completion.
We have the potential to assist people on the move by providing them with a digital identity to carry their medical and vaccination history. Humanitarian cash programs can monitor their educational attendance and provide better assistance without compromising their privacy.
By incentivizing regular medical check-ups, we can detect earlier signs of any form of violence, abuse, and neglect.
By improving the implementation of cash transfers, we help existing policies to reduce poverty.
Our solution is tailored to serve a diverse and specific group of persons, each with a deep interest in enhancing financial inclusion and streamlining humanitarian assistance. This group encompasses:
UNICEF and the United Nations (UN): These international organizations are key players in global humanitarian efforts, focusing on children's welfare, education, and health. They allocate between 600M and 3.3 Billion dollars per year to cash transfers. for vulnerable populations and support projects aiming to improve financial accessibility and inclusion.
Governments at several Levels: This includes national, regional, and local government bodies that offer subsidies and financial assistance programs aimed at promoting financial inclusion among their citizens. These entities are interested in efficient, transparent, and scalable methods to distribute aid, such as blockchain-based cash transfer systems, which can significantly enhance the impact of their social welfare programs.
The impact of our solution is multifaceted:
For Beneficiaries: Direct and secure access to aid, irrespective of their access to traditional banking or internet services.
For Aid Organizations: Reduced operational costs and improved efficiency in aid distribution.
For Donors: Enhanced transparency and traceability in how their contributions are utilized.
Our team, based in the heart of Latin America, possesses an intimate understanding of the region's specific financial accessibility challenges, uniquely positioning us to develop effective blockchain solutions. We are the ideal team to lead this project due to our deep empathy and understanding of the needs of the vulnerable populations we are committed to assisting. With a diverse range of professional backgrounds, we bring advanced technical skills in blockchain technology, along with practical experience in finance and web3 applications. Our ability to secure partnerships with major players like the UNICEF Innovation Fund, AWS, Polygon, Santander X, among others, further strengthens our capabilities.
Beyond our technical proficiency, our previous experiences have instilled in us a unique sensitivity to the realities and challenges facing these communities. Recognizing the importance of inclusion and accessibility in technological solutions, we endeavor to ensure that our platform is accessible to those with limited resources and without access to advanced technology.
Our team's diverse backgrounds and experiences provide us with a broad and multifaceted perspective to address the complex challenges facing these communities. We are dedicated to collaborating closely with community leaders and local organizations to ensure that our solutions are genuinely informed by the needs of the people we serve. Furthermore, our track record in similar projects has equipped us with a unique sensitivity to the needs and aspirations of populations affected by poverty, conflicts, disasters, and climate change. We are committed to leveraging this experience to design effective and meaningful solutions that address the most pressing needs of these communities.
- Foster financial and digital inclusion by supporting access to credit, digital identity tools, and insurance while securing privacy and personal data.
- 1. No Poverty
- 2. Zero Hunger
- 3. Good Health and Well-Being
- 4. Quality Education
- 8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
- 9. Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
- 10. Reduced Inequalities
- 16. Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions
- 17. Partnerships for the Goals
- Pilot
Our solution is currently in the pilot phase. As we are in the pilot stage while our technology has been launched and is serving users we are actively working on iterating and improving its features and usability.
The technical foundation of our solution comprises a sophisticated stack of technologies, services, and tools designed to ensure robustness, scalability, and security. For backend services, we utilize Django and Express.js, complemented by Docker for containerization, ensuring our infrastructure is agile and can be deployed consistently across any environment. PostgreSQL serves as our database choice due to its reliability and performance. Task management and distribution are handled by Celery with Redis, enabling efficient processing of asynchronous tasks across various workers.
Blockchain technologies play a pivotal role in our solution, with on-chain development being carried out using the Hardhat and Foundry frameworks. These tools are chosen for their reliability and the extensive support they receive from the blockchain development community.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is our primary infrastructure provider, selected for its comprehensive service offerings and scalability options. As we progress, we are also exploring additional services through proofs of concept in the early stages of the project. Among these are SMS/IVR for communication and RPC/Bundlers and Paymasters for blockchain interactions, which are critical for enhancing our platform's functionality and user experience.
In developing our solution, we emphasize using tools and solutions that have been rigorously tested and validated by the broader blockchain community. This includes leveraging Account Abstraction Contracts (e.g., Infinitism, Alchemy, Kernel) and SDKs (e.g., Stackup, Alchemy), which are instrumental in simplifying user interactions with blockchain technologies and improving overall system efficiency.
Our pilot phase is a period of growth and learning, aimed at gaining traction and potentially attracting investment capital to scale our operations. Through continuous iteration and engagement with our user base, we strive to refine our solution, ensuring it meets the needs of our target audience and contributes to our mission of promoting financial inclusion and humanitarian assistance
The initiative to apply to SOLVE as a program comes from understanding that the impact is much greater when there is collaboration and cooperation. SOLVE as a game-changer ecosystem for our tool to evolve, to be nourished by a strong network of professionals with experience, and mainly to improve its efficacy and efficiency as a means to solve problems is our main driving force.
We have a deep admiration for those who are MIT Solvers today and know that we can benefit from that network, while we also have a deep calling to collaborate with it. It’s not only the will to continue pushing boundaries, but also the responsibility that compels us to continue giving back to those who are in dire need. We trust and believe that the best answers come from collective intelligence. We share the purpose of positively impacting those who need it most, and of surrounding ourselves with an ecosystem that creates and works towards the same direction. We envision SOLVE not only as an acceleration program but mainly as a valuable group of human beings that we want to be part of.
In our experience, there is always a tipping point when you manage to be part of communities that generate impact and achieve a higher reach. We believe that SOLVE is exactly one of those ecosystems and we are extremely eager to be part of it to continue working towards a more inclusive, equitable and brighter future with opportunities for everyone.
- Business Model (e.g. product-market fit, strategy & development)
- Financial (e.g. accounting practices, pitching to investors)
- Product / Service Distribution (e.g. delivery, logistics, expanding client base)
- Public Relations (e.g. branding/marketing strategy, social and global media)