
Monthly Report: August 2018
News and Updates from Shanzhai City and iO2 Foundation
In August 2018, iO2 Team members were busy with meetings, conferences, making contacts and chasing leads. The highlight of the month happened on 10th August 2018 at Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (“AVPN”) Impact Assessment Roundtable.

Technological Innovation and Impact Measurement
Dr. Tat Lam, iO2 Foundation’s Chief Social Scientist and Founder & Chief Executive Officer of ShanZhai City, was honorably invited by AVPN to be the presenter of the roundtable discussion to give a presentation on “Technological Innovation and Impact Measurement”.
At the discussion, Lam shared the latest work of iO2 Foundation and ShanZhai City on utilizing decentralised blockchain technologies for social development. In the last few years, there has been an accelerated interest in impact investing, inflowing billions of dollars into philanthropy industry. Dr. Lam commented the traditional “financial contributors → social services → end-beneficiaries” model limits creativity and autonomy at the operation level of social development.
If we can ascertain and quantify the value and effectiveness of impact through impact measurement mechanism, we can learn exactly how resources shall be optimized to benefit the end-beneficiaries. “In this model, impact measurement is no longer an issue of accountability, but it is about and incentivization mechanism for everyone to game for the maximized impact on the ground, ” said Dr. Tat Lam.
Dr. Lam also suggested that “pay-for-success” is an alternative way to look at transparent philanthropy, because in this case, the financial contributor is not longer interested in how people spending the money, but only focusing on impact generating.
One of the most controversial topics in AVPN Impact Assessment Roundtable was about decentralized identification (“DID”). In iO2 and SZC’s project in Brazil, our team has been developing adaptive decentralized and unique identification system for end-beneficiaries. If you missed our recent progress on DID, you may refer to our article: Decentralized ID for Vulnerable Children and Households in Brazil.
→View Dr. Tat Lam’s reflection for AVPN roundtable: How Decentralized Technologies Used for Social Developments←
New Project
We have been hard at work on our new project with MM Community. MM Community is a Myanmar-based crowdsourcing platform that seeks to facilitate local governments in sourcing funds for specific projects via low-interest community loans from local citizens, and donations from international donors and impact investors.
iO2 Team is now cooperating with MM Community to build an evidence-based case study to support its advocacy work towards Myanmar’s union (federal) government, and to investigate the feasibility as well as the effectiveness of different elements within the “Commvestment Bond Model”.
Stay tuned for more updates! Follow us and and find out more about iO2:
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