Bringing Transparency to Education Donations With Blockchain-Powered Micro Scholarships

VILNIUS, Lithuania, August 30, 2019 (Newswire.com) - ​Each year, approximately 102.5bn USD is donated for education in the US alone, according to the annual reports by CAE and Giving USA. However, there is little transparency as to how these donations are used by the intermediaries and what impact is achieved with contributions that sponsors make to the cause they donate for. This is a problem that can be solved at scale with blockchain technology. BitDegree has launched the first transparent open-source micro-scholarship solution that may transform the education donations.

BitDegree Scholarships is the solution that enables tracking how contributions made by sponsors are used in real-time. Sponsors’ user experience is similar to that of advertisers running Google ad campaigns.

All of this is possible because of the solution that BitDegree has developed for recording educational achievements: the data gets recorded into blockchain as immutable credentials. Blockchain credentials serve as secure and transparent rails on which then decentralized payments can run. The entire solution can scale infinitely because of its decentralized open-source nature, where relationships among parties involved are handled through transparent customizable automatic contracts.

The solution cuts-out the middleman, such as education charities, as the blockchain system can control the education process and its funding automatically at a much lower cost. 

Micro-scholarships are currently available for online learning on the BitDegree platform as a showcase, and other offline and online education vendors and charities are welcome to join. Motivated learners from around the world can ask for a micro-scholarship to cover the course cost and compensate for their time spent while learning as an incentive.

Financial incentives for learning are important because learners in developing and even developed countries often have to choose between learning and low-paid work that provides necessary income, putting their families’ wellbeing at risk. These incentives also motivate to finish courses and to continue learning further, signaling that the skills gained are valuable for the global job market, leading to better employment opportunities. 

Learners can already apply for BitDegree Scholarships by providing their stories, motivation, and request for pre-defined micro-scholarships. Their applications will be reviewed and verified by the BitDegree team before being published on the platform for the potential sponsors to fund. In the future, the process will be fully automated.

In the current version of the BitDegree Scholarships solution, sponsors can choose which learners to support in a go-fund-me style. Sponsors get a transparent way of tracking how funds are allocated towards the learners’ education and know whose lives they impact.

Start making a change by sponsoring students here. 

Apply for BitDegree scholarships here.

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Source: Bitdegree