About a week ago, a friend of mine contacted me and suggested to join the second edition of this huge contest organized by @theycallmedan. Many of you, dear readers, are most likely familiar with @theycallmedan initiative and with rewards that were offered to winners.

To cut a long story short, the winning community would receive a total of 20k STEEM POWER delegation for an entire year. The only unfortunate catch is: the winner takes all.

After passing towards the second round (along with 20 other competing communities) and being placed at that time at 2nd place, I decided to "team up" with 2 other communities: @help.venezuela and @SteemChurch knowing, that by working together we may or may not have the chance to win main prize.

BUILDING ALLIANCES

	My main goal from that moment on was to give up my own goals and desires to become a "small whale" and instead help one of those two communities to win the main prize. I imagined that it would allow to build great trust between a few community leaders, which in return can benefit greatly many people involved.

After all is there any better way of building TRUST, than investing my own time, energy and resources to support someones else cause? Working closely together with they CEO @Emiliocabrera has been very refreshing and I only learned to respect this person more than I already did.

Past few days have brought us much closer and we learned to work together. For that reason I already feel victorious on so many levels. Regardless of the results of this contest.

Few people already asked me what was the end result and goal I was trying to achieve. Some people were not pleased that I'm getting involved in supporting community build on common passion towards religion. And since they may have a valid point, please allow me to share my vision with you all.

WHY @STEEMCHURCH?

	In my previous post BUILDING AN ALLIANCE: Ambitious goal? I introduced my idea of building alliance with my dear friend @achim03 (managing @help.venezuela) and one of Venezuelan community: @SteemChurch

Main vision behind our collaboration with @SteemChurch was simple: I believed and I still do, that learning to work together and building trust can benefit many people from both our communities in real life.

How?

I'm personally in touch with a large number of Venezuelans and since SteemChurch is a Venezuelan community of Christians, then naturally introducing my followers to a local strong group of people supporting each other.

On the other hand, SteemChirch leaders would introduce some people from their own community, who know decent english and share similar passion toward blockchain, crypto, economy etc. And together with few friends we were planning to take those people "under our wings" and help them grow.

After all (the way I see it) Venezuela is a frontliner when it comes to mass adoption of crypto by regular people. Because of their current situation and lack of stable currency. So my ultimate goal is to support those people with knowledge, experience and time.

Which I believe is in the interest of everyone involved in crypto.

ps. I also would like to mention, that leaders of SteemChurch agreed to my suggestion that in case of our victory (we were winning at that time with almost 20 votes) they will share some of received prize with 2-3 other competing communities. They proved that we have very similar values and view on life.

FULL RESPECT for that!

CONGRATULATION TO @SteemitBloggers

	Competition isn't over yet, but at this stage is pretty obvious that @SteemitBloggers managed by @jaynie and @zord189 are going to be a leaders in that contest. Congratulations to both of you.

Just yesterday SteemChurch finally has been strongly ahead leading this competition and then I started receiving messages asking me if it's true that we're playing dirty and paying people to vote on SteemChurch.

I'm sure anyone can imagine how surprising and shocking it has been for me, to realize that we were accused of "buying votes" it just to win.

The impact of those wildely promoted accusations has obviously an enormous impact on our campaign. I must be really naive, as I believed that contests like this one should get people and community leaders together. And I didn't expect that one can reach out for those resources and discredit so badly work of others.

Small (very mild) example of things I've learned about us:

I think we should all remember that Steemit is very small and many of us have mutual friends. And obviously seeing printscreens full of hate and accusations is simply painful. That's just wrong.

What I've heard about "myself" within the past 24 hours really put me off from participating in this contest for much longer. Is this what this platform has come to? Reduced to slandering other communities just to get ahead of a "competition"? Worst of all, there were no facts nor evidence of this blatant accusation.

IMPORTANT STATEMENT

	I would like to reassure everyone here, that based on my knowledge noone supporting @SteemChurch, @help.venezuela or @crypto.piotr during this contest paid to anyone for voting on them.

I need to make it clear and I can only hope that those words were only said by our "competitors" in the heat of the contest. I do not hold hard feelings for anyone involved.

As a matter of fact, if somehow SteemChurch would win, then my suggestion of sharing part of 20k SP delegation with OTHER COMMUNITIES (mostly @SteemitBloggers) would still be on the table.

I understand that discrediting "opponents" is part of the strategy (politics). and I can only hope that this statement will help to clear out our name, as it has been really seriously damaged by non-factual accusations as mentioned above.

My main goal of this post is to "clear the air" and avoid escalating of tension between our few communities.

SPECIAL THANKS

	I invested long hours within the past few days to support @SteemChurch, but I wasn't the only one who did so. And today I would love to shout "BIG THX" to a few special people.

@juanmolina, @lanzjoseg - Many of you know those two already. Both are from Venezuela, with great heart and awesome knowledge about blockchain. If you're trying to get to know supportive and active Steemians then definetly you shold check out their profile.

@emiliocabrera, @sirknight, @uyobong - Those tree representatives of SteemChurch community proved to me, that we can still be "humans" even in a country with an economy as destroyed as the one in Venezuela. Loved their engagement and effort they invested. Especially Emilio - this is a kind of guy who has a real vision and determination to reach it.

@danielwrites, @neavvy, @flash07, @thetimetravelerz, @intellihandling, @edgarare1, @andyjem - I seriously wouldn't make it all happen without your constant support guys. It's so hard to express my gratitude for all you did to support this initiative.

Please accept my apology if I had failed to mention anyone else, as those were really few long days and my brain is half-dead already.