Hello Future and bitfwd Announce New Partnership to Bring Cryptocurrency Education to Teen Refugees

Refugees reimagine career opportunities with cryptocurrency-integrated digital literacy curriculum 

NEW YORK, NY ― Hello Future, a nonprofit working to transform the refugee experience from forgotten, alone, and stuck to connected and empowered so they can thrive anywhere, announces a new partnership with bitfwd to bring cryptocurrency education to teen refugees living in the Arbat Camp in Iraqi Kurdistan. 

The developed world is moving at hyper-speed towards becoming cashless - from transactions between businesses and individuals to completely cashless experiences like rideshare apps. Yet, according to a McKinsey & Company report, “fully 2.5 billion of the world’s adults don’t use banks or microfinance institutions to save or borrow money, but unserved doesn’t mean unservable.” This situation of living “unbanked” is even worse for refugees. These cashless experiences are increasingly defining economic transactions worldwide, but refugees lack access to be able to benefit from these opportunities. 

“Living unbanked limits a person’s employment and education opportunities,” recognizes Hello Future Executive Director, Charlie Grosso. “They can’t work remotely because there is no easy way to get paid; they wouldn’t be able to pay for online courses as they don’t have credit cards.”

And refugees not only lack access to benefit from cashless experiences, but the knowledge of how to engage in this emerging technology. By partnering with bitfwd, Hello Future is introducing refugee students to cryptocurrency to give them an advantage in this global economy. The goal is to plant these early seeds with the hope that when web 3.0 arrives, these students will be better positioned to access this technology and understand how it can set them up for career opportunities that were once inaccessible. 

“Using blockchain for social impact has been a major focus for bitfwd this year,” notes bitfwd CEO, Daniel Bar. “It’s been an honor to contribute to Hello Future’s crypto literacy program to empower youth refugees. Seeing how excited those young teens are when getting to interact with cryptocurrencies is more rewarding than anything we could ask for. In the future, peer-to-peer technologies and decentralized social coordination tools will enable us to take these programs to scale. We’re excited to be building this future together!”

When refugee teens learn from a curriculum that addresses their digital academic skills alongside their social and emotional skills, and teaches them how to apply these skills in the current economy, these teens reimagine what their futures can look like. This is directly seen in Hello Future’s 2019 Impact Report, which showed an increase in confidence in students’ digital skills as well as a more positive outlook about their futures after having participated in the digital literacy workshops. 
To learn more about Hello Future’s innovative curriculum, visit: https://www.hellofuture.io/curriculum.