You might remember that I went on a hunting mission recently while in nottingham to found the @_actionhunger (twitter) vending machine for the homeless in nottingham today. — Steemit a cool concept that was born out of a team in nottingham (but is country wide) about placing vending machines that dispense goods to homeless people who have the electronic card enabling them to receive a number of items per day — food, feminine hygiene products, gloves and things like that.
well since I posted that blog post I’ve been actively going back and forth in communication with them via instagram and following their activity to see what they are up too — I’ve got a sit down coffee meeting with them next week to discuss what they are up to and ultimately put forward the steem blockchain and you guys to be a conduit in to support their efforts.
Personally I think this is huge news for both the steem blockchain and what they are trying to achieve. Just recently I saw an update on their instagram page where they visited a Leicestershire business Derek Edwards who’s generously pledged 100 vending machines to their cause — this is huge for their project and I think it’s wonderful that these machines could be across the country here in the uk and maybe it’s a project that could go global.
To give you a scale of support this project already has they have Stephen Hawking as a Patron of the Action Hunger Project and some fantastic people on the team. Although I’ve not been very interested to get involved in doing contracts or projects again the last few years this one really resonates with me at street level — as you will know if you watched my LEGACY_VLOG #3 // Eleven Years ago my Homelessness Video Blog Entry Point. — Steemit that’s how I got started doing @vlogging
I’ve already got a bunch of ideas of how we can integrate steem and the steem blockchain into their activities from activated accounts setup to sharing some of the videos on @teamvideo — maybe I need to make a more simply to follow step through of instructions in super easy language with better hand holding and being mindful of people in a community library or low bandwidth potential situation — maybe even watchable video clips on a usb stick that can be put in the vending machine.
The other idea that is floating around is the way that @greenman goes about his ‘direct to vendor’ system with people donating steem to his project and him actively using local fiat to give to those people he takes photos off, of course we have to change that up a little for vending machines because you can’t just put free money on display but I’m sure showing people how to access steem, converting it to fiat, some partnership and collaboration with a company like revolut or some other crypto card would be a good way to shake things up ;)
The potential here to help is massive, even if it’s donations to get access to surplus food stocks, turning into a charity myself to receive those shipments of foods from someone like fareshare to make the packages up to put in the vending machines and set up a countrywide local distribution network the vending machines could act very much like physical dead drops for the steem network, imagine having a virtual address on steemit for instance for each vending machine and PO box to send things from all around the world — letters of encouragement and such like to motivate people to seek out help or a better life
I’ve just registered @actionhunger here on steemit so we have the account just in case they actually want to work together, I’m hoping I can make this a useful account, collect steem or sbd from whales here on steemit to help with the project, even delegations to give that account some visibility and then we can take it from there — if for nothing else we can tell the stores of all the units across the country and who the service users are.
Imagine for a moment if for each of these 100 machines they have 25 users using them actively daily, that they are actively filled with items from surplus in the local area, information and help, steemit accounts ready to go so they can document their lives from the local library of what’s going on in their lives and how debating and talking to people here on the platform might help them back into society.
I’m excited for the meeting ;)
more news next week! :)
p.s — if you are a whale seeing this project and are interested in delegating to the @actionhunger account please drop me a message and I’ll give you all the information I have and I’m happy to do a video chat when I know more next week with the direction they are heading in and information on the team.
p.p.s -- i created the @actionhunger account with 0.100 steem and 14.5 steem power from my @nomadpictures account, the account i use a lot to create my seperate accounts.
pinterest epic wins pinboard → brand advocate for nokia, 1000heads, verisign → won vloggie for node666 (san fran 2006) → television for time team history hunters 1999 (burton on trent) → sold me.dm to evan williams in april 2011 → went to phil campbell, alabama to help raise money after tornado ripped up the town (was on sky news, bbc news)→ CNN for sxsw 2013 about austin south by southwest event → video chat with robert scoble from rackspace → music video can you spot me? → won the digital derry contest for 5k euros → crowdfunded digital signage concept called pi street → now living life through digital blockchains.
