Celo’s Alliance for Prosperity: Microworkers for the Humanitarian AI

Celo’s Alliance for Prosperity, includes over a hundred different organizations ranging from payment providers, lenders, international aid, data mining, venture capital and other large associations, including Blockchain Alliance for Social Impact, Mercy Corp, OxFam Mexico, HopeforHaiti, a16z, Coinbase Ventures, and Deutsche Telekom.

In a white paper published through the Celo Foundation and developed by Emerging Impact titled: Future Proof Aid Policy, Alliance for Prosperity lays out current developments in international aid and the transition to digital money. The report focuses on seven international organizations and their transitions to the digital assistance paradigm. UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), World Food Programme, Mercy Corp, OxFam, UNICEF, World Vision and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Contributions to the report were made by individuals from organizations such as, Oxfam, UNICEF, HopeForHaiti, Farmed, RippleWorks, Grameen Foundation, GiveDirectly, and Blockchain Positive. Mercy Corp and Consensys also provided contributors, with the former being one ofEmerging Impact’s investors, along with Coinbase, and 500 Startups, while the latter is the organization’s original home, previously known as Consensys Social Impact. 

A quote on the Alliance’s landing page on Celo’s website by Katie Huan, formerly of A16Z, succinctly sums up the goal: “Our hope is that this Alliance will start unlocking the potential of internet money”.

Mercy Corp

Kenneth Kou from Mercy Corp Ventures highlights recent blockchain pilots, presented at the Celo March 2022 conference. He also announced their Crypto For Good fund which will fund 10 blockchain startups through grants. 

The “Cross Border Stablecoin Payments for Digital Workers in Kenya” project with Celo was based in Nairobi Kenya. The project focused on digital micro services, stablecoin payments and other financial incentives. It took place during the brunt of the lockdowns, which even the World Bank admits pushed tens of millions of people into poverty. 

The report starts with: “When the economic impact of the Covid-19 lockdown reached her informal settlement in Nairobi, Lucy Atieno — a single, 26-year-old gig worker — lost her main income stream. Recently, Lucy began freelancing part-time as a digital microworker. “

Digital microwork, often AI-focused, falls under the trend of “Global Business Process Outsourcing” (BPO), a practice that entails corporations splitting up and outsouring work needed to train AI/ML as microtasks that people complete on smartphones. A service provider turns the tasks into microtasks and provides the platform people use to do the work. Right now, the majority of the work involves data annotation, which basically means categorizing data for use in AI/ML algorithms. 

Digital microtasks follow the same exact pattern as remote work robotics, where someone across the world remotely controls robots to complete basic tasks. The ability to draw from people pushed into poverty keeps costs down.  

The earnings came in the form of cUSD, CELOs stablecoin. People could either cash out their earnings from the micro work, or earn saving rewards through the Valora App. 

Training people for digital microwork was also presented in the same language used in the edtech branch of the social impact paradigm:

Digital microwork has been shown to develop microworkers’ soft skills, such as “basic interpersonal and business skills, positive work habits, an increase in self-efficacy, an increase in confidence, and an increase in social and communication skills.” Studies also identify an increase in work experience and skills thanks to microwork.

In this pilot, Appen was the service provider for the microtasks. Appen is a publicly traded company based in Australia. According to the company, they are leaders in three out of the four main steps in AI development: data sourcing, data preparation, and AI model evaluation. According to their research women are more likely to become digital microworkers, because of reduced mobility compared to men.

UC Berkeley’s Lab for Inclusive Fintech (LIFT) helped analyze the data gathered in the pilot.

LIFT aims to improve the design, reach, and efficacy of digital financial services and financial technologies. The goal is to accelerate the financial inclusion and wellbeing of underserved communities in emerging and advanced markets.

The two financial supports listed on their website are Binance Charities and Ripple Impacts. Along with Mercy Corp Ventures, Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, is listed as a strategic partner. The faculty director of LIFT, Paul Gertler was the “Chief Economist of the Human Development Network of the World Bank from 2004-2007 and the Founding Chair of the Board of Directors of the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) from 2009-2012.” He literally wrote the book on impact evaluation, and has a strong focus on early childhood interventions.

The pattern of ‘banking the unbanked’ through blockchain repeats itself. Third party service providers create a sort of bubble ecosystem, which is fully surveilled, but does not attempt to implement traditional KYC regulations (at first). These service providers take the KYC as far into the communities as possible. Generally this ends up at the level of small businesses. They initially allow people without formal identity to spend their crypto, digital voucher or community currency at these small businesses.

A blockchain-based ecosystem of virtual asset service providers (VASPs) — entities engaged in digital financial transactions and subject to KYC and AML standards — can help create a mutually-agreed standard for pre-KYC eligibility that brings transactions safely into the system rather than forcing them out of the system entirely. For those without the right identification or reliable internet connection, such as refugees and smallholder farmers, unhosted wallets — the method of storing cryptocurrency without a third party intermediary — is the only option.

CEO Tjada D’Oyen McKenna checks all the boxes of an elite ‘aid’ executive. She worked for the Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation, Mckinsey consulting, the Obama administration, American Express, General Electric, and is on the Council on Forgien Relations.

Dina Esposita, vice president of technical leadership, worked in the state department within USAID for over 15 years. She held various positions, eventually becoming director of the Office of Food for Peace, but generally worked in Africa.  

Mercy Corp’s operations find considerable overlap within US foreign policy, often working in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or wherever seems geopolitically important at the moment. This relationship has been cultivated over decades. For example, in the former Yugoslavia Mercy Corp distributed over 20M in aid since 1993 (1993-1998). In 1998 USAID gave Mercy Corp 176,000usd in emergency funding. 

In a letter to a senate subcommittee from Mercy Corp co founder Ellsworth Cullver:

Mercy Corp International has been the lead US agency providing humanitarian aid to Kosovo since 1993. We also need to lay the groundwork for a strategy of assistance, that would not only include humanitarian aid, but initiate conflict resolutions, mediation, and other peaceful negotiation of issues in the region. The NGO community is well equipped to take on these issues and should be encouraged to do so.

Ellsworth Culver, sexually abused children including his own daughter. The details provided in the linked article are disgusting. She first came forward to the organization in the 90s but the organization brushed her off and didn’t recognize her claims until 2018. While officially Mercy Corp is not a religious organization, the two founders Ellsworth Culver and Dan O’neill came from a Christian background. O’neill lived on a kubitz for some time, then “a decision to join the Roman Catholic Church, altered O’Neill’s life forever. Drawing on the social justice teachings of the church and personal faith, he started Save the Refugees Fund in 1979 to help those fleeing the killing fields of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge.” 

Grameen Foundation and Celo 

The Washington DC based Grameen Foundation originates from the Garmeen bank, a microfinance institution created by economist Muhammad Yunus, who presides over the foundation as its first chairman of the board.

Yunus received a Fullbright scholarship to study in the United States, where he attended Vanderbilt and earned his doctorate. During the Bangladesh war of independence from Pakistan Yunus organized Bengali people in the United States, created a newspaper, and the Bangladesh League of America. After the war, he moved back to support the government, and over time became more and more entangled in politics. 

An interview with the current CEO Steve Hollingworth with Wharton business school helps show how the organization aims to change people’s behavior in service of dominant agendas.

That data point was Professor [Muhammad] Yunus’ insight: Could a poor woman have the support of other women in her community to vouch for her character? That solidarity and collateral, the work of the group, was the one critical data point that made microfinance work. What’s happening now is that we are able to harness digital data to serve poor people. It can help them with health, with agriculture, with small business development. It can also derive information from them about their economics, their ability to adopt good practices and so on. [This makes it possible to] structure financial products more responsibly.

Of course, these choosers decide what is best for everyone else. Digital technologies enable larger scale analysis of things such as character and social collateral. 

Some of their partners Grameen lists include: Ford Foundation, JP Morgan, Citibank, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID, Wells Fargo, Johnson & Johnson, and the Department of International Development of the Netherlands 

Celo first partnered with the Grameen foundation in 2020 giving over 3,500 “female micro entrepreneurs‘ ‘ direct cash, as well as vouchers for food and medical supplies. This was facilitated through the Valora wallet linked to the individuals’ cell phones. 

Deciding that this approach was unsustainable in the long term they pivoted to incubating an “entrepreneurial ecosystem”, which included a local marketing cooperative called Ekolife, and Atikha, a Phillipino NGO focused on overseas workers. The project involved an online training program for starting a business and using the Valora wallet run by Atikha; use of the Valora wallet for buying supplies from Ekolife to start the business then selling the products back to the cooperative. The 800 chosen people were given 200 cUSD in start-up capital. 

Furthermore Celo allowed the community to unite under the same goal of collective livelihood sustainability and encouraged them to self-monitor and self-correct. Additionally, the use of Celo’s tools enabled Grameen and its partners to analyze the movement of funds and to gather insights on primary drivers of revenue, make improvements to the system, and maximize impact.

Employees of Ekolife were in part paid in cUSD and encouraged to participate in the Celo ecosystem. Apparently, the pilot catalyzed a digital evolution of the general business processes at Ekolife. 

They make no mention of digital identity or impact profiles for these people, but by the nature of the technology they use, digital identities were created and utilized to understand the flow of money. 

A major theme for these international aid projects revolves around creating circular ecosystems of digitally mediated activity. They are practicing and studying ways to create micro managed economies that are a blend of: financing such as microlending for entrepreneurship, traditional aid, and digital technologies mediating all aspects that range from the financial tools to training to business management. 

Building the Humanitarian Blockchain 

In 2020 Mercy Corp, Danish Red Cross, and HiveOnline released a research report outlining how to build a cross organization “humanitarian blockchain”. The report involved surveying and interviewing people across the industry. Seb Kamavar of Celo was one of the interviewees 

Mercy Corp and other related organizations have successfully experimented with blockchain for several years. In 2020 they were announcing their readiness to explore the “full potential” of blockchain by implementing a standardized interoperable system that the global humanitarian network of institutions could use. They understand the nature of network effects and recognize that blockchain will not dramatically change the landscape until mass systems are adopted.

Seeing this potential, the humanitarian sector has been experimenting with the technology [blockchain] for several years. Early projects, which have been ringfenced by necessity because of their experimental nature, have achieved demonstrable benefits in the form of cost savings, transparency, and speed of distribution. They could not, however, demonstrate the full potential of DLT as they encountered challenges related to scalability, cost, lack of collaboration and limited user adoption.

After specifically citing the Grassroots Economics and catastrophe bond projects, they mention how Red Cross “also identified the need and importance of developing a collaborative, cross agency approach to a humanitarian DLT”

Hiveonline is a Dutch company that digitizes African saving groups, agricultural cooperatives, and has blockchain based e-voucher program “cash” assistance programs. All of these products incorporate digital identity.

Cover Image: An UnBlocked Cash pilot program (Oxfam in partnership with Sempo and ConsenSys) QR code being scanned during recipient registration in Pango | Photo Credit: Keith Parsons/OxfamAUS