Hello David
I have to correct you. You have misquoted me David with your quote below.
For the record: I do
not think this project is a good use of funds and I think it will do more harm than good I also did not state anywhere that I agree with your project infact quite the opposite.
From my past posts in this forum you will see how I came to these conclusions. This is a misquote from David Hay and I object to being quoted as "agreeing" because I do not agree with this project.
To summarize DeepBlue and myself both agree it's possible to setup a class room in Cucuta, educate 300,000 and give them $4 each.
I recommend other people read my in-depth posts fully in this forum.
These are my concerns:
1.
The project is not sustainable and therefore lower value than sustainable DASH projects. The Venezuela refugees visiting Cucuta have no resources to sustain the project - unlike many other DASH Venezuela proposals that
can sustain themselves e.g. DASH HELP VENEZUELA project can sustain itself after the initial investment and is therefore much better investment than this type of project.
2.
There is no currency crisis in Cucuta, Colombia. This project is not on Venezuelan soil - Columbia does not have a currency crisis like Venezuela. This again is a huge negative for this project. So we would give DASH money in a different country that does not have a currency crisis and then expect that the town is going to convert to DASH because 300,000 people have been trained on it? That does not make sense. People are going to continue to use their own currency and just hold the DASH as an investment at best because they have no need to do exchanges with DASH. They have their own functional currency.
The place to do any projects for DASH adoption are ON VENEZUELA SOIL where there IS a currency crisis.
3.
The project is not well thought out and doubts I have raised have not been addressed logically. There are emotion based responses in this project under the banner of "we need to do something for these people". I agree we need to do something but we need to do something that is
actually going to have some long term good. Not a one hit wonder. David Hay himself stated he did not claim the project would be sustainable.
Do you not think that a sustainable project that generate wealth continuously after the initially funding is better use of funds? This is not even a humanitarian project because there is not enough money that is going to lead to lasting change. Once the Venezuela starts to generate her own wealth then they will have the money to do humanitarian projects that have lasting effects.
4.
This project is likely to do damage to other DASH projects because $2,000,000 of funding is a huge amount of money that can be used to create sustainable projects that will bring lasting value and much greater ROI for Venezuela. The DASH treasury fund has limited funds if this project goes through other projects will be excluded as has happened on the last funding cycle. We have to ensure projects of this size are going to have the intended affects.
5.
Where is the tech support going to come from on this project? It has been shown on the DASH conferences that large numbers of people had tech support questions. These were dealt with by DASH HELP Venezuela team. The team did a survey and found that 92% of people attending the conferences had additional questions and issues. That is on a conference of only 800 people. You are looking at a project of 300,000 people. Without these tech support questions being answered the training is of limited value. If you expect DASH HELP Venezuela to move to Cucate on this job then you are then taking away that resource from Caracas that needs that project support there. So who is going to do the Tech support on 300,000 people?
6.
This project is very likely exacerbate the problem in Cututa because it will act as an incentive to attract many more refugees to Cucuta region. The town is already in a desperate situation with too many refugees. Now we are providing a financial incentive for people to visit that region even more? This does not make any sense to me.
7.
David Hay says there will be massive publicity generated -
he quotes his own channel with so far 50K views on his videos on the Venezuela project. That is not massive publicity. Even if the world media gets on board with this what happens if the project falls flat - like I believe it is going to do based on the deductions stated above? What type of publicity is that going to have on the World media for DASH.
It is clear that people are reacting emotionally and not thinking logically on this project. The help is not even going to give help to these people over a sustained period of time.
Think about this for yourself you are hungry and you have your family and kids in Cucate - outside of your own country. You get your DASH what is the first thing you're going to do with it? You spend it on a meal for you family. Since it is Columbia and not Venezuela you will probably get one meal possibly two. Then no more DASH. Then what? So what are you going to do now? You know how to use DASH but you have no DASH. So what are you going to do ?
Where is the long term value in giving people a meal or two? Wouldn't you rather want to be able to give them meals every day of their lives by helping Venezuela generate its own sustainable revenue and wealth? This is very short term thinking. We need to think longer term to solve this issue. 2 meals is not going to make a difference in the long term.
This project is poorly thought out and is very likely to cause a more damage than good for the reasons stated above. I would have to say I am voting
Definite NO on this project unless someone can actually addresses the concerns I've raised on this project.