Digital Records for Volunteerism

[ben12143chen]

Hey all, my name is Benjamin Chen. I’m currently wrapping up my computer science degree at University of Texas at Austin. I have roughly 8 years experience in coding, half as hobby, half in industry / professional.

Here are some awesome blockchain projects I closely follow:

https://innovation.wfp.org/project/building-blocks (Ethereum is used as the distributed database for food rations among refugees!)

https://news.utexas.edu/2018/06/12/bitcoin-technology-has-potential-to-help-the-homeless(Blockchain addressing homelessness here in Austin!)

Overview

I want to create a decentralized system for verified volunteer and service time logging. The verified data is anchored to the blockchain as an immutable source of truth.

Volunteers document their hours on the blockchain. The service organization, or an accredited third-party organization can approve and verify the hours. Data about the event, such as type, time, along with anything else is also recorded.

This system would cut down on time theft and fraud while empowering the user with her own data.

Implementation (tentative)

Blockcerts (www.blockcerts.org) digitizes college transcripts and records it on the blockchain. Several countries currently use their open standard as a way of issuing transcripts. In reality this specification can digitize anything, acting like a public registry.

My implementation will use this specification to ensure interoperability among the many different non-profits and orgs down the road.

It will be molded to fit the use case:

• A metamask web UI to view volunteer records
• Ability to set service goals for a particular organization
• Ability to revoke a volunteer record

Philosophy

In the US, volunteering is everywhere:

• Mandatory for youth service organizations, colleges, and high schools
• Court-ordered volunteering
• One in five people regularly volunteer

Kids are volunteering earlier nowadays as extracurriculars. Users can take their volunteer certificates and show employers, schools, courts, etc.

Moreover, organizations traditionally print out or issue a single individual’s volunteer records multiple times. Because the user controls her records, an institution only needs to issue once.

The concept of self-sovereign data is powerful. Organizations merge or sometimes disappear. An online database has multiple points of failure. The user needs to be the custodian of records. Combining this with a blockchain brings the security and elimination in misconduct.

Thanks.

Next Steps

Please keep a lookout for my github.

Contact Info

Please connect with me!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-chen-6a7810127/

[paskals]

Awesome idea! When I talked about blockchain with one of my professors, who is doing a lot for developing social enterprises, he had a similar idea. This will be very useful for volunteers, they could even get some privileges with some organizations depending on the amount of work done.

[YalorMewn]

Hi @ben12143chen, thanks for submitting this idea. I think @giveth.io might be a good fit for supporting this tool. Give us a few days to review.

Also I would like to invite you to the first call of the hackathon, would you send me a quick email here YalorTackson@gmail.com also you can add yourself to the event here

[deamme]

@ben12143chen Great idea! We would love to see this happen. The project has now been approved. The repository for the project needs to be in this organization. Any specific naming that you want on it?

[ben12143chen]

Hi @deamme thank you!

I absolutely see this meshing well with giveth.io. You could use this system to run a campaign where volunteer hours are transparently tracked and applied towards a collective goal!

Let's call it volunteer-records

A more clever name is in the works, I promise! 😆

Thanks.

[deamme]

@ben12143chen You got admin permissions on the repo - here it is https://github.com/Blockternship/volunteer-records

[gichiba]

Hey ben, I like this idea! I think it'd be a great match with giveth.io, and I am a rep from Colony, so take my suggestion with a grain of salt, but I could also see this working well with Colony's reputation system providing a measure for successfully completed volunteer hours.

[YalorMewn]

Hey @ben12143chen your mentors for the remainder of the hackathon @gichiba and @Blockternship/team-colony you can reach them here https://riot.im/app/#/room/#blockternship:matrix.org

[sohkai]

@ben12143chen This looks like something that might work well within a DAO, as well. Specifically, time tracking apps like this are something that'd be awesome to see as an Aragon app so all organizations in the future (you can imagine each volunteering society being managed as its own organization) can deploy them and use them :).

[ryanchristo]

Hey @ben12143chen! This is a really cool project idea and it looks like we share a mutual source of inspiration. I recently worked on a hackathon project inspired by Building Blocks as well.

Looking forward to seeing this project take shape. I'll be helping @gichiba with support. Let us know if you have any initial questions! We'll be in touch.