The United Nations Children’s Fund has resorted to Non-Fungible Tokens to fund its internet access for schools’ mission.
The mission named, ‘Giga initiative’ is targeted at schools in developing areas and aimed to help 1.1 million schools across 49 countries.
In a joint venture with the International Telecommunication Union, the UNICEF-led initiative led to the creation of Giga in 2019.
Giga blockchain product manager, Gerben Kijne, outlined the firm’s Project Connect initiative at the Blockchain Expo in Amsterdam.
Kijne further showed that Giga had made strides in connecting schools to the internet in developing countries around the world.
According to Data provided by UNICEF, 2.9 billion people still don’t have connectivity to the World Wide Web.
Most of those who don’t have access to the internet reside in undeveloped countries and children are the most disadvantaged over the lack of internet connectivity in local schools.
To mint NFT for the programme, the initiative’s first move is mapping schools and their connectivity through Project Connect.
Giga utilizes machine learning technology to scan satellite images to identify schools on an open-source map.
UNICEF will identify the number of schools in need of internet accessibility, through Project Connect, a novel fundraising initiative that taps into the world of blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and nonfungible tokens.
To utilize the NFTs, Giga teamed up with Dutch artist Nadieh Bremer, who is Snowcrash Labs’ data visualization scientist and artist to launch a collection of 1,000 procedurally generated NFTs minted on the Ethereum blockchain.
The NFTs were produced using Giga’s school data to represent those with and without internet connectivity, where each piece of the NFTs has a world ‘above’ representing connected schools, and a world ‘below’ for unconnected schools.
The squares in the hidden pale ‘reflection’ city represent a lack of connectivity contrasted with the ‘vibrant’ connectivity in schools in the upright city.
The various colours show how many children are still in need of Internet access. The artwork is inspired by Giga’s live maps on school connectivity.
The collection of NFTs incorporates data on more than 280,000 schools from 21 countries, and each artwork represents a subset of these schools.
NFT public sale was around 240 Ethereum in totality, valued at $700,000, which went directly to connecting schools to the internet.
