Blockchain and Corporate Social Responsability, better together.
By: Edu Montoya
Tags: Csr, Blockchain Technology, Ngo, Blockchain Startup, Blockchain Development

As you may know if you have read my previous posts (a little bit of autospam 😉) -Tokens, Sia & Celebs- I am an unconditional fan of the Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies but today I woke up in a philosophical mood so I started to think about the reason of Blockchain existence and what benefits it could bring to the society in general and not only to the companies that use it. That’s why today I will be mentioning some of the Business that are commited and have implemented Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in their business.

Kiva started as a crowdfunding in 2005 and has been constantly innovating to meet the diverse lending needs of people around the world. From San Francisco they try to reinvent microfinance with more flexible terms, support community-wide projects or reduce costs for borrowers, always improving.

What makes Kiva different? Anyone can start by lending the small amount of $25 to Kiva and be part of the change with this minimal contribution. 100% of each dollar you lend on Kiva goes to project loan financing and you are the one choosing the person or project that is going to borrow your money. As a lender you will be repaid in full.

The platform works with Kiva’s Protocol, a digital identification system that uses Blockchain technology to address two major barriers to accessing financial services: lack of formal identification and lack of verifiable credit history. This service has been implemented in Sierra Leone and it covers a need of its population as 80% of the citizens are unbanked and cannot access the financial services they need. This project is expected to continue its growth in other regions.

A few months ago I made my first loan so I would like to know if you will also join the cause!

Kiva Protocol- Blockchain

I nternxt, in this case this platform is a Decentralized Cloud Storage. This Spanish company uses Blockchain technology to give us the freedom and the ownership of our data as it ensures that we have our files, photos or any digital document really safe and no one else, except us, has access to them.

We already know that big corporations like Google, One Drive, iCloud or Dropbox offer this kind of service but we also know that these big companies are not really secure and do not care about our privacy since they usually access our information and take advantage of it.

Internxt Drive uses point-to-point encryption and Blockchain technology, so that the files you upload are completely safe from third parties (hackers and even the company itself). During the pandemic, Internxt offered its service for free to anyone who needed it, both companies and individuals, as many companies were not digitally prepared for remote work.

In addition, Internxt is environmentally aware since behind every screen where you simply see your files there is an industry that requires high levels of energy, which has harmful effects due to the CO2 emissions generated to keep the network fully operational at all times.

According to McKensey, “the ICT market as a whole produces around 2% of all carbon dioxide emissions in the world, a figure similar to that represented by the aviation industry. What’s worse, this percentage is expected to grow to 3–4% by 2020, when the ICT sector will more than double the carbon dioxide emissions of countries like the United Kingdom”. Using decentralized storage helps reduce the CO2 emissions that are produced.

Moreover, Internxt has a campaign to raise awareness against deforestation. For every customer who subscribes to one of their plans, they plant a tree.🎉

This other project that I read about recently caught my attention, thanks to the union of RTI , an independent non-profit institute, and Collaborative Health Solutions. Its goal is to encourage more timely, reliable, and safe reporting of domestic violence crimes. The only catch I see is that they are only planning to implement it in California for now.

They want to ensure the safety, privacy and integrity of medical reports submitted to authorities that include photographs and personal information. We also make sure that the photographs and data in the medical reports are not altered or manipulated. We could implement this in many countries, but in my personal case, given that I live in Spain, cases of gender-based violence against women have increased during the lockdown, as had been warned by various organizations such as the UN. In Spain, calls to the help-line telephone for victims, 016, have increased by 60% during the month of April if we compare them with those received in that month of the previous year.

Tell me, are there any similar measures in your countries?

As a conclusion I would say that perhaps it is too early to know how beneficial the growth and adoption of the Blockchain applications will be for the social impact but little by little we see more avant-garde companies that are betting on it and also many companies that are trying to solve these social problems and are looking for ways to fit the Blockchain into their business model. With them we benefit from the potential that the blockchain has to instill trust among multiple parties, reduce costs, increase efficiency and improve security as you have seen in the companies I mentioned above.

I hope you enjoyed the reading and if you know of any other company that tries to carry out corporate social responsibility activities through the Blockchain system let me know in the comment section. I will read you!