Country: Lithuania
Organisation: Bitdegree, UAB
Website: bitdegree.org
Twitter: @bitdegree_learn
Linkedin: bitdegree
BitDegree is one of the global leaders in the field of Blockchain in Education, recognized as one of the leading EdTech startups in Europe and in 2019 has won the World Summit Awards by the UN in the Education category, given to solutions that improve society. BitDegree has developed a global blockchain credentialing system that can be used by online & traditional education institutions. Moreover, the system allows for transfer of economic value tied to educational achievements. In response to the Prize, BitDegree has developed BitDegree Scholarships. It is an open-source autonomous global credentials and scholarships solution that learners, educational institutions / charities and donors can use today.
How Does BitDegree work?
BitDegree Scholarships Showcase was launched on the BitDegree Platform (570k learners) in August 2019 and has already received significant interest. Learners can request micro-scholarships tied to courses on the BitDegree Platform and get it once they complete learning as proven by a blockchain certificate. Education donors can choose to sponsor individual learners with a micro-scholarship and know for sure that the learning has happened as the funds will leave the smart-contract only once the blockchain certificate was issued. This Showcase completely eliminates intermediaries from the education donations and allows for Peer-2-Peer donations with full transparency and traceability.
The autonomous nature of the solution enables micro-scholarships to become the catalyst for education donations and online learning, similarly to how micro-financing was to financial inclusion. Moreover, the Showcase is focusing on reskilling and up-skilling into digital careers, which is an enormous need and an opportunity globally, especially in the context of inclusion of the disadvantaged populations. The European labour-force also needs to transform itself to remain competitive in the Digital Age and it must do in a way that does no leave out the most vulnerable ones, such as refugees.
The Prize is encouraging BitDegree to innovate beyond what investors are comfortable with and, if won, will be used for further Scholarships solution development beyond the state-of-the-art and global scaling of it. Lastly, the Prize would give awareness and credibility to the solution for it to be adopted by the masses.