Empowch are winners!

Just over a month ago we started a boot camp organized by The Stellar Foundation for an open-application grant program called The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) for projects that are being proposed for The Stellar network or that are being or have been built on the Stellar network. This was the 11th iteration of the community fund. 152 submissions were received and of those 50 were selected (a new record for SCF) based in 34 unique countries. At the end of weeks of community engagement, 21 candidates/teams were awarded their budget request, totaling 13 Million worth of XLM. 

The boot camp, which was an additional bonus for early entries, was organized by DFS Labs and was held virtually on the SCF Discord channel. The bootcamp was designed to define a problem, storyboard a solution, develop a rapid prototype, and get independent feedback. The whole process was “gamified” to add some extra spice and get participants engaged.

After boot camp was finished, all candidates had to submit a live online pitch to the Stellar community, where questions were asked, and feedback was given. For all of us at Empowch we, like every other candidate/team, found the DFS lab program to be massively beneficial. Our team from Lebanon, USA, Mexico, and Canada came together across challenging time zones to work together on the SCF11 Discord channel where we had to work through bootcamp together. It was an amazing team building exercise with our team working together, virtually, at the same time, for the first time. 

Through bootcamp we were able to identify our strengths and our weaknesses and enhance Empowch even more. The entire SCF11 experience introduced us to the Stellar community who we all found to be open to helpful at every turn. We are only at the very beginning of our journey to empower the unbanked and with the amazing help of The Stellar Community fund and The Stellar Foundation, we can continue to make a difference we know we can be.

Empowerment through Equity, Equity through Transparency.