My First Bitcoin Promotes Two Rising Stars
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador, September 16 — My First Bitcoin recently celebrated its third birthday, and the movement continues to mature. It is now old enough to start to see…
Independent educators are changing the world. They unite once a month in a General Assembly of the MPB Node Network, an initiative from My First Bitcoin, to create a thriving ecosystem of educators around the banner of “independent, impartial, bitcoin-only and community-led bitcoin education”. The GA from April 25 was attended by 24 individuals, a new record!
Welcome to this first write-up of all the progress that has been made in just over a month. Welcome to the stories from El Salvador, Kenya, Haiti, Georgia, Argentina, the UK, USA, Zambia, South Africa and Honduras!
Starting with the Genesis Node, the project from the one and only Bitcoin Country. In April, a lot of progress has been made in the field of Teacher onboarding and training. The course is being updated to the content from the newly launched Bitcoin Diploma 2024, and the same counts for the Activities that are part of this curriculum. These resources will be open source, so everyone can use them. Additionally, MPB works on a learning management system (LMS) to publish all materials in a digital platform.
Besides that, the Bitcoin for Business Course has been kicked off with 2M Group. The workgroup finalized the “200 module scope and sequence” and the first modules were assigned to the first subject-matter experts (SME’s).
Also, the Spanish version of the BD 2024 is in the final stages of translation and should be available soon! The same counts for the teacher lesson plan guide.
Finally, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education (MINED) from El Salvador, MPB and The Little Hodler started working on new educational resources for younger ages.
MPB teachers graduated 97 public school teachers who learned the Bitcoin Diploma, and together with Bitcoin Beach the training of a new group of 90 high school level teachers has begun.
Moving on to Africa: Felix Mukungu from The Core shares his insights into what’s happening in Kenya. The April intake went well and he started classes of the 3rd cohort of the BD with students from all over the world, with the help of other Node Network leaders; Glenn Jooste from Bitcoin Ubuntu, Hector Alvero from MPB and Huxley from BPUK.
Three hundred thirty new students are going to be introduced to bitcoin, a 15% increase since the last cohort! 150+ students joined the Google Classroom. Classes started April 23 and will complete June 2024, and students join from Haiti, Afghanistan, India, Zambia and many other countries.
The Core is also finalizing the creation of a pitch deck, which allows The Core to create more proof of work, like organizing meetups. The first meetup in Nairobi was concluded successfully!
Somewhere else in Nairobi, more bitcoin education is gaining momentum. MasterGuantai is going to schools in the rural community to donate Bitcoin Diploma 2024 workbooks. Having physically printed materials in the hands of these kids is a strong signal, as it makes bitcoin tangible for those that don’t have access to digital resources continuously due to internet access. Sharing these bitcoin books with friends is creating a strong signal!
MasterGuantai has also developed both short and long form content about the Bitcoin Diploma. The snippets of these long form videos are republished on TikTok and Instagram.
“All kids are on these platforms, Twitter is an echo chamber. We all already know what bitcoin is.”
Guantai focuses on Swahili, and he encourages everyone to move away from the English language, if possible, as this resonates better in the informal settlements.
Concurrently, in Argentina, this educational revolution and movement continues. Bitcoin School AR started with their first new class via Universidad Siglo 21. On April 25, more than 65 students joined the hybrid classes, leading them into the bitcoin rabbithole.
Besides that, Trevor is halfway through the curriculum with 10 weekly students. The key? Combine food and education: an Argentinian barbecue to match the local culture with talks about global currency.
“Launching your Light Node with meetups is separating the wheat from the chaff. These are people that choose to use their free time to come to a meetup. It’s a great way to encounter signal!”
Besides online classes, Trevor also works on workshops about downloading wallets and setting up SeedSigners.
Fun fact? Trevor will take the Bitcoin Diploma to so-called “cuevas”. These are informal local exchange houses, and bitcoin could be a great match as it’s a peak fiat business!
Next: D’Jovany from the brand-new node called YesBitcoin. This project from Haiti joined the Node Network in April.
YesBitcoin is securing housing, and are looking to start expanding the fundraising efforts on Geyser. The community is starting to grow as well, as a WhatsApp group chat is started with translated materials to creole, sending them sats and help them to buy airtime with bitcoin.
These are the first steps of a project that will undoubtedly take off in the upcoming months!
In the meantime, BPUK organized the London Halving Party and raised 4.5m sats for Bitcoin for Palestine! But more impressively, Huxley printed 500 student workbooks, all of these Bitcoin Diploma books being paid with fundraised money.
The works on hardware tools are also continuing, after BPUK has been setting up many nodes in both the UK and also supporting the set-up of nodes in other countries. The website is being built, a collaboration with Bitcoin Racing is started too.
Again: pure Proof-of-Work!
Bitcoin Ekasi has been teaching the MPB Bitcoin Diploma for 5 days a week, with multiple people per class. With 14 recruits (young adults from the community) and 19 Diploma classes in one month, the progress is astonishing. This also causes Ekasi to focus on actively expanding their recruitment efforts.
The foundations are being built for a big educational movement to accelerate from!
The General Assembly welcomed one more new project! Again, an educational initiative that’s “in the pipeline” – this time in the country of Georgia. All efforts and energy are directed into translating the workbook to the Georgian language and hiring ambassadors. Creating an industry-wide glossary is an important step in this process as well.
Cultural habits and the fertile ground for bitcoin education in Georgia is making this an exciting project to keep an eye on over the next months!
Welcome to the network, Mary!
Zambia celebrated the first graduation of the first cohort! These eight students are part of the Genesis Class, and they set the mark of successful first months of Bitcoin Victoria Falls. Well done, team!
They learned about fiat, bitcoin, lighting and much more. The next step is to bring bitcoin in practice, with the taxi driver and a merchant owner that were part of the class. Downloading wallets and sending sats is part of this.
The next cohort starts in June. “In Zambia we have high inflation, so it’s easy to understand hard money. It has been a great journey and I’m excited to see our future.”
https://twitter.com/BitcoinVicFalls/status/1778897378155647399
Dominican Republic celebrated the first successful bitcoin meetup. Besides that, Pedro has been focusing on the “colonial zone” in the capital to orangepill tour guides, as this group can be a good advocate for decentralized money.
“We want to decentralize and let other people do the ground work!”
Interestingly, the team is also building on a Telegram bot that covers the Bitcoin Diploma with questions, information and assignments, so everyone can learn about bitcoin remotely with gamification.
Finally, Amity Age continues to impress. The Honduran project finished the fifth cohort with a graduation, and the excitement is palpable. The sixth and seventh cohorts will happen simultaneously, and a joint graduation will follow after!
“The impact we had in Roatan is very good. The principal at a school has heard about the education we do about financial literacy.”
If you are a community leader and bitcoin educator and want to be part of our Node Network, check out our GitHub page. If you want to use our open source Bitcoin Diploma workbook, you can! It’s available on GitHub as well.
For any questions about the Node Network or any other international collaboration, feel free to reach out to Arnold Hubach (arnold@miprimerbitcoin.io).
