Crypto industry philanthropy keeps growing, and this time it is none other than the Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin, who joined hands with the payment startup OmiseGo to donate $1 million for refugee relief.
The donation was made in OMG tokens directly to refugees through GiveDirectly, a New York-based charity with a mission to "send money directly to the extreme poor".
"We hope the fortunes made in the crypto space will lead not to extravagant lifestyles but to extravagant generosity," Buterin and others involved in the act said in a joint statement titled "Stateless payments for stateless people".
Founded in 2017, OmiseGo is a subsidiary of the Bangkok-based Omise, an online payment gateway provider in Southeast Asia.
The startup with the slogan "Unbank the Banked" aims to enable financial inclusion and interoperability through the public, decentralized OMG network, thus avoiding intermediaries and reducing costs.
The latest donation will benefit more than 1.4 million refugees in Uganda, mainly those who have fled the conflict in Democratic Republic of Congo. The fund an help refugees get basic rights such as education, land and the right to leave settlements or become a citizen, according to GiveDirectly.
The charity ran a pilot of the project in 2017, reaching 4,400 households that translates to 21,500 individuals. In the pilot, households received lump sum cash transfers of around $650 either as mobile money or through traditional banking.
GiveDirectly targets 8,000 households in the current phase and plans to scale the program significantly over the next year.
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