The UnBlocked Cash Project

This application showcases The UnBlocked Cash Project, and focuses on generating positive social change among some of the poorest and most vulnerable communities in the world. This is achieved through the pioneering of a decentralized model to address the global challenge of delivering international aid to disaster-affected women and men in ways that are more efficient, transparent and sustainable, utilising Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).

This contributes to the Prize’s objective to develop scalable, efficient and high-impact decentralized solutions to social innovation challenges leveraging DLT. This innovation places disaster affected people and their communities at the center of decision making related to their cash-based entitlements and addresses the global challenge of linking institutions and individuals directly to those they want to support in ways that do not compromise transparency and accountability.

This Application is built upon a successful collaboration between Oxfam- a global leader in delivering humanitarian assistance and Sempo – a missiondriven Fintech start-up working at the intersection between humanitarian aid, technology and financial services. Together, Oxfam and Sempo have demonstrated the first successful trial demonstrating community co-development of a blockchain solution to deliver localised, cash-based disaster assistance in the Pacific region.

The main objective of this Horizon 2020 Prize application is to scale the ‘UnBlocked Cash’ project across the Pacific Region to test the model in meeting the needs of underserved and remote communities and to explore the potential to scale in comparable contexts, globally. Local communities are always first responders – yet are rarely the main responders to the increasing challenges of natural, climate-related, and manmade crises.

The UnBlocked Cash project builds upon the global commitment to deliver more humanitarian and development programs in the form of cash, voucher, and market-based approaches. We offer an opportunity to improve the efficiency of how aid is delivered without compromising transparency and sustainability and by integrating digital financial inclusion and utilization of decentralized networks for a more collaborative economy at the community level.