Dash Youth is an initiative in Venezuela to teach young individuals about Dash, new technologies, and how it can help improve their lives.
Dash Youth was founded to focus “on the education of the youth population from Venezuela” since they are “an audience that is open to learning especially of new technologies and who is seen as the present and the future of the country”, according to a press releases given to Dash Force News. The video above highlights the informational Dash adoption problems that Dash Youth is trying to solve in Venezuela; a survey of over 200 students 15-26 showed that 89% have heard of cryptocurrencies, but 80% lacked the basic knowledge to get involved with cryptocurrencies and 85% have not heard of Dash. Santos Bermúdez, coordinator of Dash Youth, further expanded on their strategy of actively involving Venezuelan youths to help correct this issue.
“[W]e offer an [introduction in] the cafeteria of the school or university that we visit, in order for them to start receiving Dash as payment method [so] students can pay for their breakfast and lunches with this cryptocurrency. To do this, we demonstrate how to use the Dash Wallet by making a transaction equivalent to $1 in Dash to each student who has attended the forum, and how to make use of those Dash at the time of buying their lunches, so that both the merchant and the student can experience doing and receiving the transaction, and how fast and easy it is.”
The press release added that this strategy adds a real life application and context for Venezuelans in addition to their lessons on the history of money and the financial aspects, characteristics, advantages, uses, and legal status of Dash and cryptocurrencies.
So far, they have seen pretty good success rates of reaching new, young individuals and teaching them about cryptocurrency and Dash.
Growing Dash through new adoption
Dash Youth’s treasury proposal focused on how they would help increase Dash’s adoption by targeting younger individuals that are likely to adopt Dash as they are more comfortable with new technology. Two of their main proposal goals were to add over 1800 wallet downloads and more than 20 Dash accepting merchants. Their press release featured adoption statistics that speak for themselves.
“In these three months of work in Caracas, we have visited 11 universities, 6 schools, impacting 2,200 students who have attended our forums, with 1,800 downloaded Dash Wallets, and 16 new businesses accepting Dash.”
The team has also focused on conferences, which might not have as many quantitative stats, but nevertheless, still have a very important qualitative role in gaining new Dash adopters.
“In addition, we have organized and participated in 5 youth events in order to raise awareness of the Dash network and of our work to hold more forums in universities. In qualitative terms, we consider that the impact has been significant, that is, the young people attending our forums and talks not only assist to listen to our presentation, but also participate with interesting comments and opinions, ask questions, and actively participate in our dynamics. As we said before, the interest has been extraordinary and we are very satisfied.”
Dash Youth is also affiliated with a new proposal, Dash Active Agents, which “seeks to [visualize] the knowledge about Dash through different channels”. Dash Youth will be in charge of the basic training and support for Dash Active Agents. Their original proposal for Dash Youth received 947 Yes votes and 85 No votes for a combined funding of 75 Dash over 3 months.
Dash continues growth in Venezuela through multiple channels
Dash has seen rapid adoption in Venezuela (over 1000 Dash accepting merchants listed on DiscoverDash) because of Dash’s superior offerings when compared to government fiat currencies and other cryptocurrencies. Dash not only offers cheaper, faster, and more secure payments, but also offers a more stable store of value when compared to the local currency of the Bolivar. Dash has been able to achieve these features because of its unique Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) and Treasury that enables Dash to professionally pay developers to maintain the network in the best interests of the network and consumers. Additionally, this structure also enables Dash to professionally pay and incentivize community outreach groups to educate the public about how Dash works and how Dash can help individuals.
In addition to Dash Youth, this has allowed groups like Dash Venezuela and Dash Colombia to emerge to help educate individuals in their respective countries about Dash and how it can benefit their lives. Dash Help has also emerged to help troubleshoot any questions that consumers or merchants have about Dash throughout Latin America. Dash Text is also continuing their campaign to enable Dash transactions via SMS text to make it even easier for individuals to use Dash since they will only need a mobile network connection rather than a data connection. Throughout the world groups like Dash Embassy D-A-CH, Dashy Africa, Dash Hub Africa, Dash People, and others have also emerged to benefit consumers and merchants in their respective regions. All these groups are examples of how Dash’s unique structure helps further lower the switching costs from the old financial system so merchants and consumers can easily enjoy the monetary and financial freedom that Dash grants.
