How the Ethereum Foundation Got UNICEF to Embrace Blockchain

"We are still discussing the details on what we can do together, but we have decided to continue support for the next couple of years," said Ethereum Foundation Director Aya Miyaguchi.

"I believe a partnership with a group like UNICEF can maximize our impact without shifting our focus from what we still need to do to improve Ethereum as a technology."

The UNICEF Kazakhstan office has developed an ethereum-based system for processing internal payments, such as sending funds from the UNICEF headquarters to people running a local education program.

Chris Fabian, co-lead of UNICEF Ventures, said so far the crypto fund is starting slow by funding several startups like Coinsence, a Tunisian token project experimenting with ERC-20 tokens for community currencies.

Fabian said last year's donation from the Ethereum Foundation was "Part of a larger agreement with them, that we had to test some of the piping with them first."

The ethereum community is investing in global outreach through this agreement with UNICEF, even without directly implementing blockchain solutions.

Gaskevych said basic materials related to blockchain technology and smart contracts were incorporated into the Kazakhstan office's digital literacy program for youth, teaching 200 people about ethereum so far.

That's how UNICEF aims to make this project sustainable beyond one-off donations.

Why ETH?To be clear, there's one main reason ethereum became the most widely used blockchain technology across UNICEF's global development strategy, which seeks to deploy nearly $45 billion in diverse programs around the world.

The reason is the Ethereum Foundation reached out and ponied up.