‘Kabuni gives tools for people to shape their future’ says head of innovation
An ecosystem where you can play a role in giving communities around the world the tools to shape their own future through education is the motivation for its new head of innovation becoming involved in Kabuni.
Prof Ashley George was won over by the passion and energy of Kabuni founder Nimesh Patel for a better world that can be created by a different approach to education that allows people to reach their potential.
A chemist by profession, Prof George is accustomed to leading large innovation projects having worked at GlaxoSmithKline for 23 years where his last role was to run the ‘global centre of innovation and consumerisation” that involved “helping to steer the supertanker”.
And having been impressed by Nimesh he has recently taken over a role of leading research and innovation on an advisory board at Kabuni. Speaking to Ashley it is clear to see his enthusiasm for the project that will empower communities to achieve their own goals as that is his ethos around “doing it for themselves”.
He has a clear map in his head about how Kabuni projects can be structured with a focus on the community and for people involved to see the results of their own work that will in turn motivate and inspire.
Kabuni is a blockchain ecosystem where volunteers — called ChangeMakers — are rewarded with Kabuni Coin. Projects are based around education, development and sustainability to bring about change.
Prof George freely admits that he was far removed from the crypto world when he became involved in Kabuni and for him the ecosystem is all about sustainability projects “that happen to be on a blockchain”.
Focusing on the value of the community he says: “They are the ones who are going to do it for themselves — the work — what we need to do is give everybody in that community a clear line of sight for their impact in the Kabuni ecosystem and that is the challenge.
“(They can then say) ‘I acted as a mentor in education or in building a school, I helped in the design, it helped that child or adult’ and it gives that line through. This is important for any community based endeavour or donation, they have got to be able to sit back and say I did that.
“So this is why I always put the community at the top — not at the bottom — because they are the ones, without that community with its energy and passion it wouldn’t happen, it would just be people at the bottom saying we’ve got to do it like this or that. For me it is always like an inverted pyramid.”
Prof George has only been on board for a few weeks but he already has clear in his mind the structure for how the projects can work. “We want to build the community out, underneath needs to be split into splint groups and the trick will be to how these link together as they will all have a passion and an energy.
“It will be a case of them having this task that will take two months, let’s split it into three splints, and you may have in the community someone who says I’ve got enough time and energy to do all three splints but another for whatever their personal reasons will say I can’t do splint one but I can do splint two and three. It gives us the ability to be flexible.”
Prof George is working on the idea of having 100 families in each of four cohorts which will run in a year. These will be in yet to be designated parts of the world.
“So for the educational challenge it may be 100 families building a school, another maybe another aspect of education and then finally underneath it all is where the advisory board will be,” said Ashley. “That links in with the Kabuni own board that will be able to harness all that energy, influence and knowledge that is above it. This is currently what we are building.”
He emphasised: “This is about sustainability, it is not a meme coin, and it can make a difference to how society works.”
And for people involved they need to see the fruits of their efforts. “It is basically bragging rights so they can say ‘that was me’ and that will keep them coming back, keep them investing, putting Kabuni Coin in, saying I like that I will put some Kabuni Coin there,” he said. “The first is 100 families deciding and building their own school. That will be a blueprint for others who can take it and build on it for their local purposes, it could be a case of looking at it and saying what went well and what didn’t go so well.
“Is it going to be a physical place? If you think about a school in parts of southern Saharan Africa that job is to feed children and while they are there they start to learn. In some parts of the world that is their only meal, that is the hook to get the children to write and do arithmetic. That is a different driver to a western school, it is taking the nuts and bolts — if we get it right — to undo the jigsaw puzzle where I like the edge but I don’t like the picture in the middle.
“This coupled with the ability to do it in virtual reality takes that step forward. We’ve seen something abstract on a piece of paper but you really want to experience it and think if that stands a chance then being able to link through the virtual experience to the physical building of the structure.
“Freedom of the virtual world needs to be constrained by the physical laws of the real world, so as we begin to build out, think that if we do it like this then these are some of the laws we need to take into the virtual world so when the 100 families begin to build and design their virtual world they have these constraints — if they have a roof they need to be able to hold it up and it needs to be structurally sound.”
Certainly there is a very different feel to Kabuni than the many crypto projects out there where there is anonymity about what is happening behind the scenes. There is a very active Discord community with Nimesh himself and moderators quick to respond to questions.
“This is week one and I am really encouraged,” said Ashley. “I first met Nimesh at a forum in February and was struck by his passion. He started talking to me about his vision of harnessing the power in every individual. The chemist in me then asked how are you actually going to do it? And he started describing it.”
