Hacking for hunger alleviation solutions that leverage the power of women’s leadership and blockchain technology
London, UK – London Fintech Week kicked off at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre on Monday, July 9. The event is bringing together an anticipated 5,000 leading fintech thinkers throughout the week from around the globe to engage in one of the world’s leading financial services ecosystems.
The week began with a three day #HackQuantum blockchain hackathon challenge, hosted at Cocoon Networks, which brought together 50+ developers and strategists to hack on solutions for world hunger that harness the power of blockchain technology and women’s leadership.
The #HackQuantum Worldwide Series spans across developing and developed countries and combines diverse talent from all over the world into a “pressure cooker” environment to accelerate new and quantum ideas that move the needle in meeting the SDGs. The goal of each #HackQuantum event is to generate new blockchain solutions toward the valuing of women’s leadership in delivering each of the UN SDGs and an inclusive economy.
Present at the event was keynote speaker, Patsy Doerr, Global Head of Corporate Responsibility and Inclusion at Thomson Reuters and emcee, Dr. Jane Thomason, Global Ambassador to the Centre for Digital Transformation, Abt Associates and CEO, Blockchain Quantum Impact. Following the event, Dr. Thomason said “the passion among the teams in knowing that they had the chance to contribute to a global movement to empower and improve women’s lives and economic opportunity was extraordinary. This is a source of true innovation and facilitates the brilliance of multiple intelligences to emerge. We now have solutions from Nigeria and London – we can take these forward and create a global impact accelerator and social impact fund that allows these ideas to be developed and taken to scale.”
After a weekend of hacking, two winning groups were announced and were given the opportunity to present their innovations at the London Fintech Week conference yesterday morning. SoftPower, one of the winning teams, came up with a pilot community empowerment and hunger project that enable customised environments to be seeded, supported, grown, fertilised and cross pollinated for a Quantum Leap by Qi Women’s Token, education and the power of technology and blockchain.
The second winning group, WasteCurb, created a blockchain solution which addresses the global hunger problem by helping governments in developed countries implement a “waste-credit” system to curb excess food waste. Credits are then distributed via digital currency through our network to developing countries for investment in agricultural infrastructure and the empowerment of female farmers.
Along with the two winning teams, three additional were chosen as runners up to compete for the Quantum Leap SDG Prize. The winning team of the prize will be flown to New York in September to present their innovation at the inaugural SDG Finance Summit taking place at the United Nations headquarters during General Assembly week. The Quantum Leap SDG Prize will be awarded if there is a team that arrives at a credible solution to enable women and frontier tech to deliver a solution for the End Of Hunger, with 100X change result from the current benchmark; and that will affect the lives of at least one billion people by 2030. All five teams are working closely with Andrea Marmolejo, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Blue Topaz Capital, who is helping the teams finalize their presentations to present via live video stream to a panel that will include top level people from Thomson Reuters, a big agricultural corporation focused on women and hunger, and a top representative from the United Nations.
Amber Nystrom, Co-Founding Principal, 5th Element Group, states, “we are honoured to have partnered with Fintech Worldwide, Abt Associates, Global Partnerships Forum, Blockchain for Impact and Blockchain Commission for Sustainable Development to bring forward our second Decade Of Women #HackQuantum, dedicated to true quantum leap solutions for women levering frontier tech to create a dignified, unified and decentralized world.”
About 5th Element Group
5th Element Group, PBC was born from the urgent recognition that our global economy is fundamentally out of sync with humanity’s great challenges, and is unable in its current form to deliver a different and flourishing future that serves all. Designed as a Supercluster of Quantum Innovation, 5th Element serves as a global collaboration destination with the mission to quantum leap a new worldwide web of values or “Web 3.0” to re-purpose and deploy blockchain based smart contracts and new forms of digital value exchange to exponentiate impact, decentralize collective wisdom and action, and democratize new means of innovative capital creation and delivery that will meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030; and to thereby enable a fully flourishing future for people, planet and prosperity – with no one left behind.
About Decade Of Women
Launched on International Women’s Day on March 8, 2018, the Decade Of Women is a worldwide solutions campaign created to celebrate, unite and exponentiate sustained action to foster bold financial commitments to fully advance the gender equity revolution and fulfill the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) #5. The campaign is distinct in focusing on levering the vital power of frontier technologies across blockchain and digital assets to at last achieve economic engagement and financial independence of all women. This will require the unlocking of capital to allow frontier technologies to scale. The laser-sharp focus is on actionable, large-scale initiatives to harness the power of exponential new technology to advance the Decade Of Women. Sign their #WeUniteWe Pledge at decadeofwomen.org
About Fintech Week
Fintech Week is a series of conferences, exhibitions, workshops, hackathons, meetups and parties. Each day we focus on a different topic. We always ensure that there is plenty of time for networking and meeting other innovators. Fintech Week delegates come from around the globe to engage in one of the world’s leading financial services ecosystems. With 600-1,000 conference delegates per day from over 50 countries and 3,000 – 5,000 participants in events throughout the week, it’s truly an international event.
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For press inquiries regarding the Decade ?Of? Women, please contact:
Cristina Rauch | cristina@5thelement.group