Humanitarian organization CARE has announced a partnership with decentralized finance platform Celo (CELO) to develop its first blockchain project in Latin America.
In a press statement, CARE indicted it aims to utilize the Celo blockchain in achieving a quicker, cheaper, and more traceable way of delivering aid.
CARE highlighted that the lack of intermediaries in disseminating funds would avail more money towards its mission.
The organization notes that the current centralized system of tacking aid makes monitoring transfers from the donor to beneficiary slow and inaccurate. Therefore, the inefficiencies open the door for fraud and graft.
Under the partnership, CARE Ecuador will deploy Celo’s cUSD stablecoin as a voucher-based system for establishing a digitized process to enhance secure dissemination of aid to Ecuadorian women in need of health services.
The voucher distribution will be through the Umoja platform by the economic empowerment organization Emerging Impact.
“The benefits blockchain can provide are potentially tremendous. We’ve chosen to work with Celo not only because their technology is some of the best we’ve reviewed, but because they’ve built a thriving network of like-minded organizations,” said Christian Pennotti, Senior Director, Market Based Approaches at CARE.
At the same time, the Celo blockchain will be utilized by over 150 mission-aligned organizations in partnership with Emerging Impact and CARE.
Increasing cUSD use cases
The deal adds another use case for the cUSD stablecoin. Early this year, Celo, through its remittance app, Valora used the cUSD for microfinance in the Philippines.
According to data provided by Crunchbase, since its inception, Celo has raised $66.5 million from various funding rounds. Notable investors in the project include Andreessen Horowitz, Greenfield One, and Electric Capital.
By press time, Celo’s native token CELO was trading at $3.02, having made gains of about 10% in the last seven days.
[coinbase]
