Amply, an EdTech platform focused on early childhood education in South Africa, is about to wrap up a successful pilot on the use of blockchain tech to monetize education-related data, with funding from UNICEF’s Innovation Fund.
Using ixo Foundation’s blockchain protocol, Amply applies the Impact Token to verify attendance rates at early childhood development centers. Attendance data are claimed by pre-school teachers and tokenized through ixo, providing schools with a verified digital asset that can be exchanged for government subsidies.
“The aim of Amply is to completely replace the paper-based subsidy management system with a system that’s completely electronic,” said Co-Founder and Systems Architect Lohan Spies.
The IXO token – an ERC-20 utility token – promotes the creation, transfer, and verification of Impact Data on any social impact project, facilitating opportunities for private-public collaboration and impact investing.
In addition to Amply’s success, a number of other projects continue to sprout up off the ixo blockchain, including a partnership with the Seneca Park Zoo Society to measure ecosystem health in reviving forests.
Amply Project Lead Joyce Zhang said one of the company’s biggest challenges was introducing its technology to South African teachers and schools. Zhang described the pilot as a valuable learning period, teaching the company how local communities engaged with a potentially unfamiliar technology.
Since Amply’s pilot began, over 55,000 digital ID’s have been created for South African children, and the startup is currently exploring education-focused partnerships in other countries, including Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Bangladesh, and Kenya. Further, Amply hopes to eventually facilitate the provision of all social services for young children through its ecosystem.
“Our vision is to create a system that allows a child to get the services they need across the whole ecosystem,” Spies said. “Our motto is to give these children a voice.”