Community Spotlight: Motiv Perú

“When it comes to using Fedi, our community members are now ‘agarrando la ola’ (‘catching the wave’),” said Franco Granja, Community Leader at Motiv, a non-governmental organization (NGO) that uses Bitcoin as a tool to empower communities.

Granja went on to explain what this looks like.

He shared that the members of the communities with whom Motiv works are now using the full suite of features that Fedi offers — from its wallet to its Communities and private messaging features.

“All of the tools that Fedi offers are useful for the community,” added Granja.

While this is music to our ears at Fedi, we’d be remiss not to acknowledge the work that Granja and the team at Motiv have done to enable the members of the communities with whom it works to benefit from an app like Fedi.

Motiv’s Impact On Perú

The Motiv story started in late 2019 when its co-founders Rich Swisher and Valentin (Vali) Popescu went to a remote village in the Andes to install a playground for a school for an organization with which they were working at the time.

In completing this task, they came to find that the village in which they were working was losing 5% of its children per year to issues related to cold exposure and infection due to a lack of proper footwear.

In July 2020, they founded Motiv to not only meet the basic needs of the children in the village, but to help them thrive.

It wasn’t long after Rich and Vali started Motiv that they thought to use Bitcoin as a tool in a country in which over 50% of the population is unbanked.

Bitcoin was a perfect fit for Motiv, an organization looking to economically empower the community members with whom it worked by making them more self-sufficient.

“The team at Motiv educates and equips communities who are looking for a comprehensive way to move away from having to be dependent on handouts,” Popescu told me in an interview. “We want them to be self-sovereign, and Bitcoin helps with this.”

The work that the team at Motiv has done has not only helped people living in some of the most remote parts of the country — from the Andes to the Amazon — but it’s inspired many members of these communities, especially women, to become community leaders themselves.

Fedi’s Latin America Community Master, Lorena Ortiz, in Huayllapata, Cusco with members of one of the communities with which Motiv works.

Motiv Uses Fedi As More Than A Wallet

When Motiv first began using Fedi, one of the first things the Motiv team did was to create their own federation.

In the wake of doing so, they began exploring the app with guidance from Fedi’s Latin America Community Master, Lorena Ortiz. (Both Granja and Popescu sang Ortiz’s praises. We get it, guys — we think she’s great, too!)

Granja and Ortiz, educating Motiv team members about Fedi.

It was during this process that both Granja and Popescu recognized Fed’s various capabilities.

“Fedi goes much beyond simply being a wallet,” said Granja. “For example, it has Mini Apps that give people other tools and that we can use for educational purposes. It also has the Communities feature, which allows people from different physical communities to interact.”

Motiv team member Moises transacts with Fedi in a general store in Huayllapata, Cusco

Popescu piggybacked on this point.

“The Communities feature is great for connecting people from the different villages in which we work,” he said.

Given that Motiv has helped kickstart 16 Bitcoin circular economies across Perú, communication between the members of these various communities is key, especially when it comes to sharing best practices for onboarding people to Bitcoin and Fedi.

With that said, using Fedi as more than a wallet tends to come after new users get comfortable sending and receiving sats, something that Granja and Popescu helped them practice at a recent Open Day event.

Motiv And Fedi Team Up For Open Day Events

Open Day refers to a period each year in Perú in which museums, historical places, and even schools are open to the public to visit.

This year, Open Day ran from 2 March to 5 March, and the team at Motiv attended three events at which they introduced new Motiv community members to Fedi.

“We helped people download the Fedi wallet and start to transact,” said Granja. “Some of the people there had gone through entrepreneurship training with Motiv and now they sell desserts and other types of food. Many of the people were surprised at how fast and easy to use Fedi is, and they hadn’t even ever heard of what Bitcoin is.”

Women selling baked goods and other food for bitcoin

Granja added that sometimes it can be difficult to get people away from using the financial and communication apps that they’re more used to or from transacting with physical dollars or soles (Perú’s national currency).

He also said, however, that the people with whom Motiv works are beginning to see that new digital solutions like Fedi exist and that these tools aren’t as hard to use as they originally thought.

Popescu added that much of the work that Motiv does is helping to alleviate the anxieties that people may have when engaging with new technology like Fedi.

“Open Day events not only provide us with an opportunity to help people to try the Fedi app by purchasing goods from the locals with it but to answer any questions they might have about it, as some of the community members are not very accustomed to using digital apps in general,” said Popescu.

A Motiv team member teaches someone how to use Fedi at an Open Day event.

Long-Term Success Through Partnership

Because certain members of the communities with whom Motiv works aren’t always accustomed to using digital technology, the real work around adopting an app like Fedi begins after Open Day-type events end, according to Popescu.

“An app like Fedi is often used by Moms and female entrepreneurs and it takes time for them to truly understand all that Fedi offers,” Popescu explained.

Popescu added that some of the key factors regarding how quickly new communities adopt a new technology like Fedi are how dedicated the leaders on the ground in these communities are and how much these leaders feel supported by the Motiv and Fedi teams.

He also noted that he and Granja feel confident in teaching the members of the communities with which they work about Fedi not just because of their level of commitment, but because they know that they have the support of Ortiz and the broader Fedi team, as well.

Community members in the Andes from learning how to use Fedi.

It’s this joint effort that makes Granja believe that a tool like Fedi will help Motiv continue to empower those in Perú who’ve historically been disenfranchised. 

“We are delighted to be able to work hand-in-hand with Fedi so that people can continue to expand towards the financial freedom that [our community members] need,” said Granja.

“Above all, [we are] educating and equipping them so that they also understand that they are important,” he added.

“When they feel marginalized, they have to understand and know that there are platforms like Motiv Perú, like Fedi, that [enable] us to provide education so that they can have a positive impact inside and outside their community.”

Author’s note: All of Granja’s quotes were translated from Spanish.