St. Vincent De Paul Disaster Services Launches Kokua, a Disaster Relief Payments Platform Built on the Algorand Blockchain, to Bring Game-Changing Efficiency and Transparency to Relief Aid for People Affected by Natural Disasters
For the first time, families affected by deadly natural disasters will receive help through a survivor wallet, integrated with Amazon and developed in collaboration with AID:Tech and the Algorand Foundation, with aid funds from the American Red Cross
ALEXANDRIA, Va., 30 November 2022 /PRNewswire/ — St. Vincent de Paul Disaster Services, a leading US relief organization helping people in situational poverty caused by natural and man-made disasters, today announced the launch of the Kokua Survivor Wallet in partnership with AID: Techa provider of Web3 Onchain Reputation & Rewards infrastructure, and The Algorand Foundation. Kokua – leveraging the open, public Algorand blockchain – is a disbursement platform that facilitates the connection of natural disaster survivors to the relief that will aid their recovery. Survivors are able to validate their identity, receive digital aid funding via Algorand’s blockchain, and redeem them for critical items such as furniture and other household items, with orders fulfilled by Amazon – all within the Kokua Survivor Wallet.
The first launch of Kokua will serve 100 Tennessee families affected by the deadly winter tornadoes of 2021. Survivors, identified by St. Vincent de Paul Disaster Services and Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, will receive emergency aid funded by the American Red Cross. Traditional aid distribution is fraught with lengthy identification and verification processes that prevent survivors from stabilizing quickly. Kokua bypasses logistical blockades that are the status quo by connecting to those who need it directly via the mobile app.
To launch Kokua, St. Vincent de Paul chose to partner with best-in-class technology providers. By leveraging the Algorand blockchain, which is carbon negative, permissionless, and efficient—capable of processing 6,000 transactions per second with full finality—beneficiaries can rest assured that their redemption transactions are secure, verified, and do not harm the environment. The new identity process developed by AID:Tech enables survivors to verify who they are via Decentralized Identifiers (DID). Which is designed to be implemented without the control or inefficiency of a centralized registry, identity provider or certification authority.
“As natural disasters continue to grow in intensity and frequency, blockchain technology is a practical solution to keep pace with the growing need for assistance,” said Elizabeth Disco-Shearer, Executive Director of St. Vincent de Paul Disaster Services. “Through Kokua, aid will reach the people who need it most with greater speed, enable more autonomy for disaster victims and bring greater accountability to the aid field more broadly.”
Together, the technology and partners behind Kokua will bring efficiency and transparency to critical disaster relief processes like never before, serving as a new model for how aid distribution can work in the digital age.
“Often, it’s not the pooling of resources that hinders disaster relief, it’s the distribution,” said Matt Keller, director of impact and inclusion at the Algorand Foundation. “This Algorand-backed survivor wallet uniquely leverages blockchain technology to ensure aid is securely and efficiently distributed to those in need with unprecedented transparency, as all distributions are publicly traceable on-chain.”
“Using the Algorand blockchain, we give control back to survivors by allowing them to own, control and manage their digital identity,” added Joseph Thompson, CEO of AID:Tech. “Once survivors are verified using our proprietary method, they can use Kokua seamlessly without the hassle of proving their identity to multiple devices.”
Kokua will be available to emergency responders on both iOS and Android devices.
About St. Vincent de Paul Disaster Services
St. Vincent de Paul Disaster Services is a second responder and Catholic lay organization that provides person-to-person recovery services to families affected by man-made and natural disasters across the United States. In addition, local Vincentians (members) dedicate thousands of volunteer hours to helping families affected by natural disasters. The program will continue to focus community efforts on the long-term case management needs of affected individuals after all first-responder agencies have departed. https://www.svdpdisaster.org/
About the Algorand Foundation
The Algorand blockchain — designed by MIT professor and Turing Award-winning cryptographer Silvio Micali — is uniquely capable of delivering on the promise of a borderless global economy. It achieves transaction throughputs at the speed of traditional finance, but with instant finality, near zero transaction costs, and on a 24/7 basis. Its carbon-neutral platform and unique pure proof-of-stake consensus mechanism solves the “blockchain trilemma” by achieving both security and scalability on a decentralized protocol, and without a second of downtime since its launch in 2019.
The Algorand Foundation is dedicated to helping fulfill the global promise of the Algorand blockchain by taking responsibility for its healthy supply economy, decentralized governance, and healthy and prosperous open source ecosystem. For more information, visit https://algorand.foundation
About AID:Tech
AID:Tech merges digital identity with payments and builds an identity ramp from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0. AID:Tech focuses on real-world use cases such as disaster relief payments to bring the benefits of decentralization and sovereign identity to non-crypto native. AID:Tech’s Onchain Reputation & Rewards infrastructure enables people to build a reputation and be rewarded for their time, effort and energy as they contribute to society both physically and virtually. Learn more at https://aid.technology
Media contact
[email protected]
View original content to download multimedia: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/st-vincent-de-paul-disaster-services-launches-kokua-a-platform-for-disaster-relief-disbursements -built -on-the-algorand-blockchain-to-bring-game-changing-efficiency-and-transparency-to-relief funding-for-people-impacted-by-natur-301690364.html
SOURCE Algorand
