How to get your community to do something good (like feeding 380 hungry kids)?

TD;LR

Build something based on the values you believe in.
People who share your values will become your community.
Together you'll be able to do great things.

Now, here's the longer version, with all the details:

This story begins with two very different communities. The first community is that of indigenous people in Peru. The second community doesn't share a country, a time zone or a language. It’s the decentralized community of Spacemesh, a new cryptocurrency in the making.

But before we tell you how these two communities came together, let’s tell you more about the first one. Indigenous people make up for 25% of Peru’s population. Yet they make up for over 50% of extremely-poor households in Peru. The 19 communities in this story live in the jungle, in the plains of the country (Sierra) and the hillside along the coast (the Costa). All 19 live in extreme poverty.

Let’s paint a picture, so you can imagine it. The people in the jungle communities live in reed huts, with dirt floors and palm roofs. They are always at risk of fires. There is no transportation that can reach their homes. The people of the plains live in homes made of mud and stone, with dirt floors and thatched roofs. There’s no transportation there either. The people along the coast live in stone houses, with dirt floors, and corrugated iron for a roof.

Only 3% of the kids in these communities have access to education. The nearest school is two hours away. By foot. They have almost no access to Health services. This is the reason for the communities' overpopulation. They get no sexuality-education and no family planning.

What they do have going for them, since 2012, is a beautiful local nonprofit called Agape Hand. This organization is quite extraordinary. First of all, Agape Hand doesn’t only “give a fish”, but “teaches how to fish. What we mean is, they supply food to the hungry, but also education and other forms of empowerment. The other unusual aspect of their work, is that they pour 95% of all the donations into the communities. And only 5% to operational expenses.

But what does all this have to do with the Spacemesh crypto community?

Well, this community rallies around two shared interests. One is cryptographic innovation. For example the concept of PoST (Proof of Space Time), new consensus mechanisms, and mesh instead of a chain. All these appeal to their intellectual capacity and curiosity. But they also share an interest in specific social values.

“Cryptocurrencies are really ‘cryptocultures’" says Dr. Paul J. Ennis. He continues to explain that “each culture embeds its values into their blockchain. It’s a sociotechnical arrangement: The values and technology are mixed up with one another.”

What the Spacemesh community taught us is that this is exactly true. That the appeal is in the values. In their own words:

“Fairness and equality are embedded into the algorithm of Spacemesh; fairness because you get a fair start without any premine that’s available only for insiders. Equality because no matter if you are small or big, you will get the amount of Smesh (the coin) that is the relative size to your contribution to the network. It unlocks the revolution of crypto mining for everyone, it’s the power of DeFi equality.” 810ckch41n

We listened to our community, and for weeks were looking for a way to turn our values into actions. Then finally we got lucky. The founder of Agape Hand and one of the lead team members met online. This meeting exposed us to Agape Hand’s ability to feed people for an entire year at the cost of $8 per person.

We told our community about Agape Hand. They supported the idea: setting up a fundraiser of $80K for Agape Hand, to feed 10,000 people for an entire year.

Ever since, our discord is bursting with community-generated campaign materials. So far we’ve fed 380 hungry kids. Below you can see a thank-you sign they sent us. This is the power of community, and it’s only the beginning.

We are the Spacemesh community, and we just fed 380 real kids. Ask us anything.

And, of course, you are more than welcome to feed a kid or a family yourself https://gogetfunding.com/spacemesh/

You can also donate in BTC or ETH directly to the nonprofit:
BTC 1Wb3NGMD8L7Ut6oVgJvNPtCeNxsXxhP2J
ETH 0x4c8f3d202ee5df4b1540d31ba37c8350f93f0e33