Block.IS Innovator – Comunitaria

Comunitaria (previously known as Wikibank) is a Spanish Fintech that allows a revolutionary efficiency in the fresh-food donation sector to those in greater need.

Comunitaria is a community-driven charity primarily operating in Seville. One of the ideas behind the project is to allow recipients of donations from poor neighbourhoods to have access to fresh food instead of what they could hope to get from traditional food banks.

Donors around the world can make a pre-purchase of fresh food on a local market in a deprived neighbourhood, using their preferred payment method. This pre-purchase is simultaneously converted into digital food vouchers (stablecoins cryptocurrency that we mint) and distributed among the most vulnerable on their mobile phone.

The donee (perceptors of donations) can buy pre-purchased fresh-food in their local market with Comunitaria’s app (extremely easy to use), without the need of a bank account or a credit/debit card. Food banks require a huge management effort and do not provide perishable food which leads to malnutrition. The donor has no control over its final use, which makes some people reluctant to donate.

The government along with organizations like the Red Cross has tried to alleviate the problem by giving pre-loaded debit cards to impoverished families that they can use only at a large supermarket chain. This money does not re-circulate in the neighbourhood, it just goes in and out.

A solution was needed so that the donor could have the confidence that her money would contribute to the purchase of fresh food, improve the economy of the neighbourhood, and be simple, low cost and transparent.

1) The recipient does not need to have a bank account or a credit card, solving the problem of the unbanked.
2) The use of the donor’s money is to buy fresh food and is traceable.
3) Providing fresh food prevents malnutrition associated with impoverished people.
3) The process is transparent.
4) The cost of administration is very low and the efficiency very high.
5) The money circulates into the local economy helping the recovery of the whole neighbourhood.