BItmal

BitMal is a social enterprise fostering and enabling a regenerative ecosystem through a Blockchain based web platform. Through its social currency token (Bitmal) ,it  rewards members of the community actively contributing with their skills and talents to the formation and scaling of social enterprises while enabling financial capital contributions to social good.

Bitmal optimizes social impact by enabling communities to re-allocate resources to where they have the greatest needs and to those they trust the most. It leverages technology and data to crowd source decision making process to members of the community in a decentralized manner by distributing Bitmals to social enterprises community identifies as having the most impactful outcomes. 

Members of local communities are not empowered to decide where resources, earmarked to the community, need to be allocated based on their needs. This limits impacts, reduce ability of community to access funds and results in a misallocation  of funds as donors/ funders are not able to identify what communities really need and whom do they perceive as being its most trustworthy members. By creating a social scoring mechanisms and tracking through the platform sROI (social return on investments), Bitmal will help donors/investors to allocate their funds to projects the community needs the most and to those they trust the most. It would further allow them to better track their funds and increase accountability through blockchain infrastructure 

Social entrepreneurs, members of local community ( youth, women, professionals), donors/investors and corporations/organizations wanting to support local communities. The Bitmal platform will allow them to be part of a new ecosystem that builds a reputation through a reward and incentive system. The solution will allow community to:

Gain skills

Volunteers can use part of their Bitmals earned to access reward programs such as training programs to gain expertise and upgrade their skills.

Provide greater exposure to employers

Through bitmal’s gamification features, the platform boosts the top profiles of volunteers who contribute the most to the community. They build a reputation for being reliable which sends a strong signal to prospective employers interested in hiring top achievers

Access to Funding

creates an intrinsic social scoring system where social enterprises with most impactful value proposition receive most of the Bitmals.  This provides investors/donors an indication of ventures with greatest potential in the communities.

Increase efficiency and impact of donor funding

Bitmal would reduce costs of due diligences and increases efficency of investment decisions. Volunteers, become their own communities’ impact investors as they evaluate value propositions and accordingly decide where to allocate the Bitmals 

The platform rewards community members with the Bitmal social currency (token) for their volunteering work enabling them to use Bitmal earned to fund social projects and enterprises they want to support. On the other hand, It allows donors and large organizations to directly fund social project/ enterprise on the platform using the Bitmal token.  >span class="spelle">

• In a first phase, it can be assumed that the currency would be used as a utility token that gradually builds a reputation capital and trust of its users and would evolve as a security token. 
• The platform would allow social enterprises to cash out of the system to procure services needed while individuals will not be allowed to cash out.

• the founders of social projects/ ventures (entrepreneurs)
• those funding social projects (donors)
• members of the community (crowd) who are incentivized to contribute their viewpoints, expertise and opinions through votes.  The community would acknowledge any contribution (financial, skills, labor, in-kind contributions) with votes and the votes would translate into reputational currency ( Bitmal).

The theory change of change is innovative in that it creates a regenerative ecosystem,  enabled by blockchain technologies grounded on an incentive structure that uses reward and reputational mechanisms. It creates a new capacity-building model to support the ability of members of a community to improve their lives, access resources and opportunities, addressing a number of challenges:    

The platform leveraging blockchain technology which allows for greater

optimizes transparency, mitigates risk for corruption and misallocation of resources. The Bitmal enables donors and other platform participants full transparency into an immutable ledger of transactions, enabling them to see how their money is being used and impact of their investments. 

Activities: Members of the community volunteer and receive Bitmals in exchange of their volunteering hours. They will use part of the Bitmals earned to seed formation and scaling of social enterprises and remaining Bitmals to upgrade their skills by enrolling in training programs.

Output1: increased engagement of members of the community to build an ecosystem where they are empowered to decide on the allocation of funds to where the community needs the most

Outcome1:Increase in the value of voluntarism, number of volunteers and volunteering hours

Output 2t:Incentivize scaling and formation of social Enterprises

Outcomes 2:

-Increase in the number of projects and social enterprises posted by entrepreneurs 

-Decrease of costs of funding and running of social projects 

Output 3: Encourage decentralization by outsourcing the decision making process to the community of volunteers

Outcome 3: Volunteers have an urge to re-donate the BitMals to support Social Enterprises/Start-ups

Output 4: Build an ecosystem of volunteers, social entrepreneurs, and the bitmal social token standard

Outcome 4: Streamlining  of process flow through ecosystem with minimal bottlenecks 

We are currently serving  a community of 1000 volunteers through our partnership with a local organization, Ruwwad Al Tanmiya. As of today 70 members registered on the platform and more than 8 social initiatives and enterprises were on-boarded on the platform. Through a new agreement we finalized with the Saudi Telecom company (STC) , 8000 of STC employees will be using the platform in the next two years to volunteer, seed  and scale the growth of social enterprises with the goal of serving 20,000 of their employees in next 4 years. We are in discussion with a micro finance institution in Lebanon where we could cater to their users in unprivileged communities across the country.

Main Goals next year

Track 1: Build the ecosystem through a phase approach

Widen outreach within Ruwwad  to include 900 volunteers and onboard larger number of social initiaves and enterprises as to create a sustainable ecosystem

 Develop partnership with new organizations in Jordan

open up the platform to any entrepreneur , volunteer donor in the country who wants to register 

Track 2:Enhance Technology Infrastructure

Scale the Bitmal from a Beta version to a full fledge platform,  taking into consideration feedbacks received from local community,  by defining system requirements analysis, Software architecture

Track 3: Organization and HR

• Hire legal experts to develop a risk mitigation plan as to prevent aunti-money laundring, corruption or frauds.
• Hire  coordinators ( preferably with software/IT background) from within local community to optimize interaction with communities
• Create an IT back office in Jordan and ensure transfer of knowledge from Blockchain expert to local teams
• Recruit a marketing and outreach experts  to develop and implement Bitmal outreach strategy
• Develop a new M&E Framework

Goals in 5 years: Scale the platform to 8 countries in MENA, Africa and the US with a diversified use cases and target audiences as to foster the global aspect of the platform allowing for cross-countries support between the users of the platform

Barriers with next year:

- Securing funding to transition from a beta version to a full fledge platform that would better support and cater to local communities.

- Address stringent and bureaucratic donor requirements to fund projects while ensuring an agile environment for social enterprises 

- Over regulation of the fin-tech industry by central bank in some countries where usage of wallet and payment gateways is restricted 

- Social enterprises can not be registered as legal entities in some countries notably in the Middle East where social enterprise are not officially defined nor recognized by the governments of these countries

Barriers within next 5 years:

- Regulatory  requirements in terms of compliances are not always very clear nor predictable framework is not always predKYC requirements and compliance and regulatory standards for

anti-money laundering and countering the financing
of terrorism (AML/CFT) 

in some countries are quite challenging

- regulatory requirements regarding cross-border funding specially to the Arab World

- We are forming/seeking partnerships with international development organizations, impact investment funds, CSR arms of corporations, endowment funds, philanthropic organizations, angel investors and donors to inject Bitmals in the platform and build the ecosystem

- We will be using STC grant and other grants we secure in the short terms to scale the platform from a beta version to a full fledge platform as to incorporate comments received from community to enhance the user journey

-  To address KYC and validate identity of the users of the platform, we are working currently with confined communities as we build partnerships with organizations such as Ruwwad in Jordan to onboard volunteers and social enterprises.  We are further recruiting coordinators from local communities who along with partner organizations can validate the identity of the users.  As we further scale, we will seek partnership with organizations such as Jordan Loan Guarantee corporation and other organizations to validate identify in a more systematic and automated manner

- As Bitmal build its reputation, it would evolve as a virtual registry of social enterprises in absence of official registry for these organizations in different countries

- Bitmal would apply to Central Bank's sand boxes where applicable to help work through legal and regulatory issues and would contract third party provider to strengthen technological ability of the platform to address KYC 

Full Time: 2

Part Time : 4

Contractor:2

• Redha Alhaidar is based in Saudi Arabia and founded Bitmal theory of change.  He  has in his different capacities and roles advised on strategic communications and innovative and civic engagement strategies in different countries as he held different positions with public and private sector entities.  Redha was the President of the Audio Visual commission and worked with the Saudi Investment Authority, Simmons & Co. Intl. in Houston. He holds a Masters degree in Public Administration and Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a Masters degree in Communication, Culture, and Technology from Georgetown University. 
• Souad Abdelhamid is based between Jordan and Washington DC. She has more than 17 years of experience with Andersen, Ernst and Young, Bearing Point, Deloitte, UN and World Bank Group in Washington DC.  She holds a Master in Management from Boston University and a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School. Souad is also the President of the Harvard Arab Alumni Association. 

Redha and  Souad brings a unique expertise in business development, building partnership, managing operations on the ground and building Bitmal business model.  

- Christian Smith and Greg who are in charge of Bitmal web platform have a unique expertise in blockchain, cryptographic protocols and identity component.  They both worked at MIT .

- Basel Al Masri, local coordinator is a software developer and has  a solid knowledge of the needs of local communities having been recruited from the community

We are partnering with a local organization in Jordan, Ruwwad al tanmiya which whom we developed an MOU and we have signed an agreement with  Saudi Telecom Company to deploy Bitmal for 20,000 of their employees .  We have further created an advisory group that includes members of senior leadership of Ranco Holdings in Jordan who will advise Bitmals in their individual capacities 

We are currently developing new partnerships with additional organizations as we are scaling Bitmal notably with a microofinance institution in Lebanon

Social Enterprises: would receive funds from donors through volunteers, part of which they can cash out to procure services and goods hence allowing them to scale

Volunteers: they can use part of the Bitmal earned to enroll in training program which would allow them to build skills and increase their visibility to prospective employers

Donors/Investors: by better allocating funds and optimizing social impact, they would be able to reduce expenses and hence ensure that for each Bitmal invested in the platform, there will be a multiplier effect

Bitmal will generate revenues through the following streams: - administration and transaction fees on funds donors/angel investors/ international development organizations will inject in the platform - fees administrated at cash out - revenues from delivering IT services- BitMal can provide Blockchain IT solutions for enterprises that are seeking to use the BitMal platform (or a BitMal whitelabel) for their employees to volunteer, create a social good impact, or participate in community activities 

Solve can support by :

- providing needed access to mentors who can help on different aspects of the model and its deployment and technology component

- allowing access to a wider network that would help us further establish partnerships needed 

- increasing visibility of Bitmal

- increasing opportunities to access funding

We would like to crystalize discussions and form partnership with:

- largest  microfinance institution we are in discussion with in Lebanon       

 - major endowment funds/impact investment funds that would inject Bitmals in the ecosystem.  we are currently in discussion with two major endowment funds in Jordan and Saudi Arabia along with impact investment funds in Lebanon 

- IFC/World Bank in Jordan, Lebanon and Kenya where they are supporting refugees communities

- GLobal Giving

The GM Prize would allow us to further build  the ecosystem and Marketplace Bitmal is fostering in underprivileged communities notably bottom of the pyramid Jordanians and refugees communities in Jordan and Lebanon.  The Prize would be used to inject Bitmals in the platform  to:

- reward members of the communities for their volunteering work and allow them to use Bitmals earned to receive training needed to build their skill-sets

- enable them to form their own social enterprises, receive needed funding and procure goods and services from network of suppliers/service providers from which they can procure goods and services.

- empower them to decide on the allocation of funds to support and form social enterprises community needs the most

The prize would thus create a multiplier effect by increasing circulation  of Bitmals in the ecosystem rewarding more volunteers and increasing the pool of social enterprises suppliers/service.  T

It would thus foster an active engagement of members of the community instilling a sense of self esteem/self worth  as they are recognized and rewarded for their volunteering work (this is of particular significance in communities where unemployment is high and moral is low).  Furthermore, this also allows for a greater integration and sense of cohesion of refugees communities and strengthen social fabric as refugees become active members of the community and are rewarded for their contributions.

As of today initiatives on boarded on the Bitmal platform are mostly led by women from the unprivileged communities in Western Jordan. They are the strongest advocates of Bitmal in their communities as it empowers them to take the lead and make decision on the allocation of funds and initiatives they aspire to implement.  Women have gained a strong sense of achievement as they are being recognized by their communities for their engagement.

We will use the women prize to inject Bitmals in  women driven projects which would provide them with a mean to scale their initiatives and further encourage them to form social enterprises.  Throughout the deployment of the pilot, we have witnessed a paradigm shift in the way women have agglomerated into groups to lead community driven initiatives. They have gradually  demonstrated a high level of autonomy in the decision making process, ability to lead and manage volunteer and a greater engagement as they are now at the third cycle of recruiting volunteers and scaling their projects .  Prize would allow them to realize their dreams and aspirations in one of the most unprivileged  communities in Jordan.  

We will use the prize for Innovation in refugee inclusion to:

-inject Bitmals into refugees led social enterprises and innovations

-create further partnerships in communities with high agglomeration of refugees in Jordan and  scale Bitmal to Lebanon where there is a high concentration of refugees

- recruit more local coordinators from within refugees communities that would allow us to better understand the needs of the refugee community, their aspirations and increase our outreach 

Bitmal through its ecosystem allows for a greater integration of refugees communities, fostering a sense of belonging and strengthening the social fabric as refugees become active members of the community and are rewarded for their contributions  This is critical specially for large majority of educated refugees who would be empowered to contribute to host communities  in areas where they have expertise and knowledge, upgrade their skills and form their own social enterprises/initiatives. 

Not applicable

We will use the prize to:

-  further upgrade Bitmal beta version to a full fledge mobile friendly web platform that better caters to the needs of local communities. We would want to integrate feedbacks received from local communities on the beta version during the deployment of the pilot to ensure that platform provides an appealing user journey to members of local communities 

- inject Bitmals in the platform to build a regenerative ecosystem grounded on Bitmal incentive structure that uses reward and reputational mechanisms. The prize would support the ability members of local communities to improve their lives, access resources and opportunities. It would :

a)increase impactful and sustainable voluntarism: 

By receiving training, acquiring skills and earning trust of the community, volunteers will be able to sustain and grow the ecosystem as they are better equipped through training received to support social enterprises and can  access job opportunities that would raise their income enough to enable them to inject Bitmals into the ecosystem through donation ( as part of the giving back culture engrained within community)

b) Support formation of scalable and viable social enterprises creating a multiplier effect.  As ventures on the platform scale, they will increase circulation of Bitmals in the ecosystem by receiving funding, rewarding more volunteers and increasing the network of suppliers/service providers from which they procure goods and services.  This would create a multiplier effect for each Bitmal invested in the ecosystem.

Bitmal help different communities notably underprivileged communities to 

Strengthen self esteem/self worth of volunteers as they are recognized and rewarded for their volunteering work (this is of particular significance in communities where unemployment is high and morale is low) and thus would eradicate tendency for violence and extremism.

We would use prize to :

- inject Bitmals into initiatives emanating from very unprivileged communities where there are social tensions and high unemployment rates.

- develop partnerships with organizations working in high sensitive areas as to onboard volunteers and members of communities from these areas and integrate them within ecosystem

- organize outreach and awareness events with members of these communities to better integrate them