Submission for the final round of

STEEMFEST #minnowsupportproject: All expense paid trip to STEEMFEST Link

Credits go to the honorable organizer @aggroed and the supporting witnesses @ausbitbank @teamsteem @theprophet0

The challenge that needs to be addressed in the world

Life is beautiful! It really is. Imagine a universe without you. Without the yellow flower you saw this morning or without the bird in the sky singing free songs for you. The universe could be full with stars and countless planets, yet, without life, without someone looking at the beautiful sky in the night, without you, all would be meaningless. Earth and everything else would simply be a rock. Life is so beautiful.

However, life sucks! Big time. Life is pain, depression, agony, suffering, and ultimately, death. Omg life is the worst!

And then there is hope. Hope, that in times when life sucks big time there will be some way out and life can be beautiful again. Because life is supposed to be beautiful. That should be your natural state of living. It is your most intrinsic right. The whole idea about life’s initial creation was to be beauty, to be a demonstration for the entire universe about how beautiful life is. If your life sucks, you need hope.

Often, hope comes through other people. Man and woman were created as social beings. Humans need each other. Try to fly to mars in a one-person space ship. A 3-year long trip with todays technology. A normal human being would go crazy and the entire mission fails. Mark Watney (The Martian) only survived this trip mentally, because he was able to speak to other people. Human contact. We depend on each other. When life is beautiful we’re even more happy when we can share this beauty with someone else. And when life sucks we need someone else to be there. Someone who cares and stands on our side to lift us up again. Hope, because we cannot do it alone anymore.

The thing is, if it is true that we were created as social beings, that makes us not only depend on each other, that makes us also responsible for each other.

The challenge each and everyone faces in life is, how do you face the responsibility you have for other people? Choice is yours, every day, but you should choose to ask yourself this question: How can you be hope for someone else? Because without hope life cannot exist, you cannot exist.

How the challenge affects STEEM

How many people do you know, that could need a little hope? Too many, ok, let’s narrow it down. How many people do you know, that are in life-threating trouble, and hope could come in the form of money, or something you could buy with money? That probably depends on where you live. In Switzerland, you might have to search for a while, whereas if you happen to live in a certain part of Somalia it might be half of your neighborhood (if you ever make it to a computer to read this posting, which is in addition connected to the internet as well).
So, maybe not too many in Switzerland, but people in dire need are everywhere. Even here, posting on the STEEM blockchain. The kind of trouble people are in couldn’t be more different from case to case. They only have one thing in common: Without external support they don’t know how to make it to the next week, or month. And when these people happen to know the STEEM platform, they come here and ask for help.

STEEM is a brilliant platform to gather support for people in need. With a simple click, I myself can donate 50 cents at current STEEM price. It was $1 a week ago. Amazing! And I don’t lose anything in the process. On the contrary, I HAVE to vote at least 10 times a day, otherwise this voting power would be wasted.

Yet, most appeals pass bye unheard. For multiple reasons. The post just doesn’t get seen by many people, because the outreach of the posters’ account is minimal. Quickly it falls off the ‘new’ page and soon will be forgotten. An even greater challenge is trust. Why should I trust a faceless account, screaming for help? Pfft, who cares, that’s not even true. Just clickbait to collect a few extra dollars from stupid voters. Then I think sometimes, hah! Not with me guys, you don’t fool me today – and take off without leaving a click. But was I right? Maybe that person really is in such a bad situation, that making an appealing post that would gain other peoples trust is not possible anymore. Out of power. And then, it’s probably not getting seen anyway, so why bother. It’s hopeless. And here we go. Another good opportunity wasted.

Right in this moment I have the problem, that my voting power is going up towards 100% again and I don’t have the time to search for good postings that would really benefit from a nice vote. So I do the second best option, scroll through the introduceyourself tag and click-welcome some new people. What I’d really love to do even more, give these clicks to someone, where it can make the biggest possible impact in someone’s life. But where are they? @darthnava recovering well from his operation. God bless him! Whom else can I trust next?

Many people here have the same desire. They ask, where are the charities, they could benefit greatly from STEEM? One can find a number of postings from people, who donate their liquid STEEM to charity. A complicated system, and the trust-issue persists.

The vision of a better future

In a better future Steemians will have the supporting tools to make changing someone’s life with a simple click safe and easy. Nobody loses, everybody wins. It will cost less than a minute to identify valuable causes, that really deserve to be upvoted. Nobody needs to leave voting power unused. Nobody needs to worry anymore if one can really trust the appeal. Many Steemians have the chance to really receive help. In a better future, we will have a @darthnava every day, we will have 10 @darthnava s every day, not every month or maybe once in half a year.

This goal can be achieved through various ways. A “cause of the day” everyone is voting for. Or a special badge, which marks quality postings with a charity background after going through something like a certification process. Or an external website that serves as an index for proven charitable causes and real requests for donations. Or many more things and everything together. First and foremost as many people as possible must agree to support by upvoting for the causes. And for that to happen, everyone first needs to hear about the tools we will have available and then start using them regularly.

A few days ago a fellow Steemian wrote me on steem.chat and discord, that his 3-year old niece needs a heart surgery, costing $2,000. In the USA you might say, what?!? For 2,000 bucks I hardly get allowed to set a foot in the door to get a band-aid for a papercut, yet a full operation? Of course in this case the family does not have the money, because the country they live in, well, that amount could be an annual salary. Right now he went to his village for 2 weeks to bring the needed documents for proving his case. He comes from a country where even myself I have problems trusting people. Too many bad experiences, too many times being lied at. But also many good friends. So, everyone needs to get a fair chance.

In a better future we will be able to gain the needed trust and Steemians can wholeheartedly give a few cents with a click, this young girl and many many more can get the chance of a fruitful life. I have a sweet young daughter myself. She is the love of my life and I cannot imagine the pain, needing a life-saving operation and not being able to afford it.

Mission statement

When my work is successful every Steemian donates one or two 100% upvotes daily to a valuable cause that gives much needed hope to someone’s life. Doing so can be done by auto-pilot, or optional by investing one minute max, utilizing handy tools and sources of information that present trustworthy cases.

Goals for STEEMFEST

Charity is based on trust. It’s easier to trust someone that you have met in person. Especially in internet-related activities, where personal contact is rare these days. Conclusion: In order to best possible advocate for this cause and achieve the goal, meeting as many people as possible in person is mandatory.

So far, I have no idea how the program of a STEEMFEST looks like and what activities will be planned. I’d be more than happy to publicly present the progress we as a community made in this direction until November. Participate in a panel discussion, anything else that might be helpful or simply meet everyone at the bar for a chat to spread the word. I’d be more than honored to also meet the influencers of STEEM and ensure they’re keen for the idea and support the project.

It is for sure an option, that we could create the core of the needed software or website-tool during the hackathon. The concept should have been developed and tested until then.

How you plan to achieve your goals and your mission

I believe the question is not so much, if the project should be developed further and become a reality. That should be out of question for a society that is looking to bring a better future for everyone. The question is more, is @dinoo the right person to be involved in that? Do we support him with participation in discussion, with giving feedback and ideas, with voluntary engagement, also taking over other leadership roles, because you might have a charity support group started already and join here, or you let me join yours, and everything else needed, so we as a community can reach the goal together.
I raise this proposal, because I believe, yes, I can do that. Not alone of course. First of all, there is too many things I don’t know how to do, my time is limited, and the entire idea of STEEM is doing things together, collaborate, cooperate, exchange, grow as a community…

As a professional humanitarian aid worker I bring profound insight of humanitarian and emergency response work. I travelled to like 60 countries (and usually not the nice hotels at the beach), met many different cultures, held speeches in tiny villages at the end of the world where we support a small women group to grow their spices and prepare them for the market, or where a group of other women learn how to group together to protect themselves from the abuses of the ethnic conflict they find themselves into, or met the minister of education or a general from some armed forces, or the ambassador, etc.. This international experience is necessary in order to get a reliable system in place, that is supposed to serve all people in need from so many different backgrounds.

Chart of refined budget

A very basic chart of some of the expected expenses in order to attend STEEMFEST² in Portugal. I’ll fly in from Germany and probably bring my wife and daughter. More expenses will be made, and maybe I should come earlier for the hackathon already, but hey, any support is super awesome and highly appreciated. The current basic budget doesn’t need to be super refined and sums up to $630 with 3 easy budget lines (and a free entrance ticket to STEEMFEST²). I just hope the US$ is still worth something until November.

All liquid STEEM from my postings with the tag #adra get donated to the international NGO I’m working for @adra – the first bigger NGO represented on the STEEM blockchain. Please leave an upvote if you can spare one and feel warmly welcomed to follow. I’d be happy to hear from you some time in the future, maybe it will be you who is contributing a great idea to the project, that will help many people in need and maybe even save a life.

Thanks for reading until here ^_^