A BBLE must endeavor to solve one or more core social needs in its target geographic area. Merely promoting Bitcoin adoption on Bitcoin's own merits is not sufficient.
Here's why:
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It's more effective. Most people think their current money works well for them, even if it's bad money. Trying to explain Bitcoin in terms of Bitcoin (complex monetary dynamics, evil banking, and nerdy peer-to-peer technology) is not likely to work. On the other hand, giving people a cause they can relate to, such as a better future for their kids or not having to worry about cash being stolen from under their mattress, can make Bitcoin more approachable.
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It's more sustainable. While Bitcoin is a powerful tool, it's not a panacea. In addition to hard money, a flourishing civilization also needs strong families, healthy food, quality education, a robust energy grid, and so much more. Over time, a region that adopts bitcoin but still lacks fundamental necessities will not be able to sustain itself.
Bitcoin presents an incredible opportunity to rebuild the very core of society to greatly reset the failing fiat paradigm. But fiat money is not the only weakness of the fiat paradigm. This is why focusing solely on Bitcoin's monetary element indicates a short time preference—but Bitcoin is about extending peoples' time preference, and so efforts to promote circular Bitcoin economies should endeavor to set people and their communities right for the long-term. For this to happen, such efforts must be comprehensive and socially aware.
- What are the most pressing challenges facing your community?
- What is holding back your community from achieving better outcomes right now? Is it individual mindset, economic, political, or something else?
- How could these challenges be addressed without bitcoin? How would including bitcoin affect your approach and projected outcomes?
- How do you think your impact will endure over 1 year? 5 years? 10 years? 25 years? 100 years?
- What would happen if your vision for your community failed to gain traction?
El Zonte, and much of El Salvador, suffered from a vicious cycle. A lack of opportunity caused many adults to flee the country to places like USA where there was more opportunity. Their kids would grow up in El Salvador without the invaluable attention of their parents—without love, without someone to guide them, without someone to talk to them about their dreams, and without someone to nurture them with hope for the future. This dynamic created an artificial cap on families' growth, which precluded prosperity throughout the country, which prompted more adults to leave, and the cycle continued.
In response, Hope House's top goals were to counter this cycle by giving local kids tools and knowledge to fight for their dreams, take advantage of opportunities coming into the country, use Bitcoin, and promote family unity throughout El Zonte. This was best achieved by spending time with the kids who had disjointed families, discussing their hopes and dreams and plans for the future, encouraging them to focus on school, and to generally be there for them.
The primary vehicles for spending this time were community service projects:
- Cleaning the nearby river and picking up trash around the community
- Helping the elderly (e.g. running errands for them, or making repairs in their homes)
- Lifeguards to preventing people from drowning in the ocean
- Minor road repair
Sure, these projects improved the community and helped its people in real ways—but the beauty of these projects is that they also gave the kids who did them support and care they didn't receive at home while also teaching them responsibility and job skills.
While this community service was incredible, the folks at Hope House knew it wasn’t sufficient for providing the kids a better future.
Every project will be unique, but Hope House was structured around the following 4 pillars:
- Education
- Spirituality
- Recreation
- Technology
Education didn't always get first priority for kids in El Zonte, so Hope House sought to change that.
- Kids were encouraged to stay in school longer, keep good grades, and read more with tutoring programs and incentive programs.
- Since El Zonte doesn't have a high school, kids who wanted to go to high school had to travel to other towns to attend. This is logistically challenging and costly. Hope House intervened by providing meals and rides to make the trek more feasible for more kids.
- Although school formed a decent educational basis, there was a lot of practical professional knowledge that it didn't provide. So Hope House complemented school with classes to teach skills companies look for such as English, programming, marketing, and more. The goal was to give kids the skills to obtain more advanced, higher-paying remote jobs in the USA and Europe without needing to leave El Zonte.
- In case funding was ever an issue for a student to attend university, Hope House would help find scholarships or some other sponsor to make it possible.
Hope House's leaders realized that education alone wasn't enough. A human can fill their head with knowledge to attain external success, but to truly thrive, a human needs real purpose. One cannot adopt a low time-preference mindset without pondering eternity and why we are here on Earth. Underlying everything Hope House does is a belief that God designed us with an innate desire for love and connection. Roman likes to describe this as a "love tank"—everyone has one, and filling it is crucial so we're better people when we grow up. A full love tank enables empathy, which enables better families and communities, and the effect compounds and cascades.
Also central to Hope House's notion of spirituality is God, or the idea that there is some superior being out there listening to us and helping us. Everyone should try to connect with this power and harness it on a regular basis.
Practically, Hope House nurtured kids' spirituality through activities like surfing, meditation, and yoga.
Kids grow and develop in many different ways. Kids are naturally playful, they play with each other, they enjoy competing, meeting new people, dreaming, finding new passions, learning to believe in themselves, establishing goals, picking up hobbies, going on adventures...
But in poor countries like El Salvador, because of the economic pressure so many people face, sports like surfing and soccer are often thought to be a waste of time. Why surf when you could be working to put food on the table?
But missing out on sports as a kid means missing out on many major areas of development, so Hope House made it a pillar of their empowerment efforts.
The final pillar of Hope House's approach to youth empowerment is technology. While this can be seen as an extension of the education pillar, it could be said that this pillar is more about instilling a mindset that change is incessant: technology changes all the time, whether you like it or not, and up-to-date technology skill is key for lifelong empowerment.
Along with the English classes, computer classes, and marketing classes, kids are taught perhaps the most important lesson of them all: to never stop learning.
Note that Hope House built on long-standing community outreach and development programs that existed before Bitcoin was introduced to the community.
When Bitcoin became a part of the programs—years later—it supercharged the efforts in a synergistic way. The goal of the 4 pillars was essentially to extend the time preference of those in El Zonte through quality human development and service, and Bitcoin merely became a monetary layer on top of that.
To that end, Hope House started paying and incentivizing kids with bitcoin for work and initiatives they were already participating in (e.g. doing community work, keeping good grades, etc). Having people in the community with bitcoin to spend helped bring merchants onboard to accept bitcoin, and the cycle perpetuated.