Since 2019, Gravity has been providing decentralized identity solutions for the Dignified Identities for Cash assistance project (DIGID). The first phase was implemented by KRCS to meet the needs of the vulnerable populations without official IDs to receive cash assistance during covid-19. Over KES 2.1 million (19,000 dollars) were distributed to more than 300 households to address their essential needs.

read more about DIGID

Starting this year, the second phase of the project (DIGID 2) is planned until July to apply the learnings on Digital IDs so far to the migration context in Uganda and Kenya. The aim is to further test the DIGID Platform within a new setting — that of enabling vulnerable migrants to receive healthcare services with the help of verifiable health credentials.

Digital ID solutions for healthcare services

Digital Identities have been increasingly used in the healthcare sector to record and share patients’ medical and treatment history and ensure consistent care. Inspired by Good Health Pass Initiative, Gravity’s digital ID solution empowers patients to securely store and share their medical data while providing reliable means for healthcare providers to identify and authenticate patients.

Gravity’s digital ID solution is based on decentralized identity and blockchain technology, it provides user-centric platforms for data sharing and identity verification, and multiple interfaces for various types of users(smartphone, feature phone, no phone) to achieve an inclusive digital ID ecosystem.

In the context of healthcare services, Gravity enables patients to create their digital wallets and health service providers to issue verifiable medical credentials to patients’ digital wallets. When the patients go to healthcare service points, their credentials, which contain medical data like treatment history, prescription, and disease records will be verified. The data that has been shared between patients and health service providers are verifiable, accurate, and streamlined.

With Gravity, DIGID 2 is designed to promote dignity for migrants, balancing their needs to reveal critical information about themselves (due to fears or concerns about being identified) and also facilitate their access to healthcare services.

Medical credentials for migrants in Kenya: challenges and solutions

The digital ID solution for healthcare will be piloted in the Kakuma refugee camp and Kalobeyei integrated settlement. The Kakuma refugee camp is located in north-western Kenya, in the Turkana West sub-county, and was created in 1992 following the arrival of the “Lost Boys of Sudan”. Kalobeyei integrated settlement was created in 2015 to decongest the Kakuma refugee camp and promote self-resilience among the refugees and encourage integration between the host community and the refugees.

Health care services in Kakuma camp and Kalobeyei integrated settlement are free for both refugees and the host community. However, refugees face unique barriers to accessing free health care such as requirements for documentation before service, continuity of health care, the threat of harassment, and language barriers.

Currently, the KRCS in Kakuma and Kalobeyei manually processes the health records of patients making it difficult to keep the records of people and track their disease progress. Furthermore, no digital records are issued to patients as they move around even across borders, which affects their continuation of medical plans.

To overcome the obstacles, Gravity’s digital ID solution helps the KRCS to create digital medical credentials for patients, and enables healthcare providers to track and share their medical records.

To create a medical credential, KRCS will issue a digital wallet containing the patient’s medical data based on the manually-processed medical card that has been currently used. For patients who have a smartphone, they can directly view and manage their medical credentials on their wallet application; for patients who are equipped with feature phones, they can interact with their credentials via a dedicated USSD menu; for those who don’t have a phone, the medical credentials will be stored in a printed QR code.

After receiving the medical credential, when the patient goes to a designated health facility operated by the KRCS, their medical credential will be verified. The verifier can check when testing was done, by whom, what medication was prescribed, and what steps for follow-up were recommended.

Each time when the medical testing or treatment was done, the information will be stored in the same digital wallet. In the future, more issuers and verifiers will be onboarded, for example, the International Rescue Committee, Kakuma Mission Hospital, Ministry of Health, and UNHCR.

Gravity’s digital ID solution for healthcare will change how patients fundamentally interact with health systems, clinics, pharmacies, medicine delivery networks, and public health organizations.

The benefits of digital medical credentials are:

• For patients: the quality of healthcare and experience will be dramatically improved, and the transferability of care regardless of physical location is also possible. More importantly, patients are able to control personal information data sharing with healthcare providers.
• For healthcare providers: the efficiency in care planning and management will be improved, and patients’ data can be easier shared between different hospitals and clinics to keep medical records.

About Gravity

Gravity builds trusted decentralized identity solutions based on blockchain technology for individuals, organizations and governments. Users leverage Gravity to safely share their personal data to access aid, financing, employment and government services. Organizations and international NGOs use Gravity to efficiently collect verifiable data for improved service delivery, interoperability and impact. Our human-centered digital ID solutions accelerate the financial inclusion and empowerment of all people, anywhere in the world. Our work includes providing digital IDs for vulnerable individuals seeking humanitarian aid, small business owners in Africa seeking financing, refugees seeking employment and thought leadership in the government identity space. Gravity is based in Nairobi, Kenya and Paris, France.

Gravity is grateful to the Kenya Red Cross Society and the DIGID consortium of international NGOs and for their support and assistance throughout the DIGID Project.

To learn more about Gravity, visit our website at www.gravity.earth or follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Case study: Gravity digital ID solution enables vulnerable migrants in Kenya to receive consistent… was originally published in Gravity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Interview Introduction

In the installment of the XTZ.News “Tezos Dev Series”, Gravity offers a Q&A with our Lead Engineer, François Guérin.

In this Q&A, François shares his insights on the Tezos ecosystem and his experience developing Gravity’s decentralized identity protocol on Tezos.

François, can you start off with a short intro about yourself and your work at Gravity?

I’ve been the Lead Engineer at Gravity for the last two and a half years. After getting a Master’s degree in Math, Computer Science and Cryptography, my first experience with blockchain was as the Blockchain Tech Lead at Aubay France, where I implemented a private blockchain within a compliant document certification application.

Now, I manage the technical team at Gravity, which includes an IT Development Manager and Frontend Developer. At Gravity, we leverage blockchain technology to build trusted digital identities.

Users and small businesses leverage Gravity to safely share their personal data to access services such as financing, humanitarian aid, employment, and government services. International organizations and institutions use Gravity to efficiently collect verifiable data for improved service delivery, interoperability and impact.

As the Lead Developer, a big part of my role is to build Gravity’s decentralized identity protocol and blockchain architecture on Tezos.

I’ve also worked to deploy a decentralized credential repository and have Gravity’s decentralized identity protocol recognized by W3C standards as a W3C decentralized identity verifiable credentials standards implementation, ensuring that our protocol is more scalable, standardized and transparent.

Why are you interested in blockchain?

I like that with blockchain, there’s a direct application of my studies with this intersection of math, cryptography and computer science.

Blockchain is also a technology that’s still somewhat “new” for a lot of people, and it’s constantly evolving. I like that there’s a lot that you can learn from and bring to the blockchain tech community.

What has been your experience developing on Tezos?

With Tezos, it’s really exciting as an engineer to be challenged to innovate and develop in a space that’s always evolving and growing. I have experience with smart contract development using Michelson, the native language for smart contracts.

I’ve also had the chance to implement Gravity’s own version of the Tezos DID Method and DID Manager, which are key components of our decentralized identity protocol on Tezos.

A DID Method is the mechanism by which a particular type of decentralized identifier (DID) and its associated DID document are created, resolved, updated and deactivated.

The Tezos DID Method specifies how Tezos can be used for DID creation and management, compatible with the issuance, storage, and verification of Verifiable Credentials. DID Managers are smart contracts on the Tezos blockchain that implement the Tezos DID method’s specific on-chain functionalities.

What tools do you like?

Personally, I like spoons. No, but really, I like Taquito. Each Tezos node exposes an http API so we can access them. Taquito wraps an http client in order to access the http API in a more convenient way.

What do you find most valuable about developing on Tezos compared to other blockchains?

I think the Tezos ecosystem’s focus on formal verification of smart contracts and on-chain governance is extremely important. And compared to Ethereum and Bitcoin, Tezos is cheaper, more efficient and better for the environment. Because Tezos is a liquid-proof of stake protocol, it also consumes less resources than the proof of work of other blockchains.

For me, elliptic curves are something that you don’t typically see as a developer. As someone with a math background, I see the importance of having a strong cryptographic mechanism, which Tezos offers. Because the language is extremely cryptic, it also allows developers to have greater control over what we’re developing.

What Tezos projects are you most excited about?

Everything is interesting, but I really like TZIP-16! It’s powerful, and you can have what we call “views functions” attribute getters and meta-data. It’s not only the smart contract, you also have this upper layer that allows you to have off-chain data.

It was great when I worked to integrate Gravity with the TZIP-16 standard. With this TZIP-16 implementation, now we can provide off-chain metadata during the resolution of DID Documents from DIDs.

What do you hope to see from the Tezos ecosystem in the future?

If something like OpenTimestamps appears on Tezos, it would be really exciting!

What’s on the horizon for Gravity?

Most people know about Gravity’s work with organisations like the UNDP Turkey, the Kenya Red Cross and the DIGID Project consortium of NGOs to leverage decentralized identity for improved humanitarian action (check out the latest case studies on our Medium blog to learn more).

As we continue to deepen our work in the humanitarian space, Gravity is also focusing on building out our supply chain finance (SCF) use case. In fact, we just released a new video to share how our digital ID solutions for supply chain financing work.

The idea is that our SCF solution builds trust among financial service providers, merchants and suppliers to unlock greater financing opportunities for all stakeholders.

Our tech team is really excited to be developing this solution, which uses decentralized ID and blockchain technology to enable small business merchants to create trusted financial identities using digital ID wallets that can give them access to affordable working capital and help them grow their businesses.

As an engineer, it’s awesome to keep building technology that can be leveraged for different real-world use cases and have such a big impact on people’s everyday lives!

To learn more about Gravity, follow us today!

Gravity is an ID2020-certified digital ID solution that empowers individuals, international organisations, and governments to create trusted decentralized identities that are private, portable, and persistent.

Our vision is to build human-centered digital ID solutions for easy, transparent, and secure data sharing for all people, anywhere in the world. For a more in-depth overview of Gravity’s work, check out our article here.

Website: www.gravity.earth

Twitter: @gravityID_earth

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gravity-earth/

Medium: https://medium.com/gravity-earth

Telegram: @GravityID_earth

Q&A with Gravity’s lead engineer: François Guérin was originally published in Gravity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Gravity and Tykn are pleased to announce our continued collaboration to advance the interoperability of our two distinct decentralized identity solutions for improved identity management in the humanitarian sector. Recently, Gravity and Tykn successfully conducted an interoperability Proof of Concept between Gravity’s digital ID protocol built on Tezos blockchain and Tykn’s Cloud Wallet built on Sovrin blockchain within the context of the Dignified Identities in Cash Programming (DIGID) project.

The DIGID Project provides one of the first examples — if not the first! — of attempts at interoperability between two different decentralized identity technologies in the humanitarian context.

To date, there have only been a few attempts at demonstrating interoperability within decentralized identity that we are aware of.* With our novel approach, Gravity and Tykn’s collaboration is an exciting first step towards achieving interoperability between different decentralized identity wallets based on two distinct protocols that leverage very different standards and networks.

To better explain the importance of interoperability of digital identity solutions within the humanitarian context, this article includes the following sections:

• What is interoperability?
• Why is interoperability important?
• What are the benefits of interoperability between decentralized ID solutions in the humanitarian sector?
• How are Gravity and Tykn addressing interoperability within the context of the DIGID Project?

What is interoperability?

Interoperability refers to the basic ability of different systems (for example, the two decentralized identity protocols from Gravity and Tykn) to readily connect and exchange information with one another. In terms of decentralized identity, interoperability involves a scenario where Alice, who has a decentralized identity wallet based on protocol A can share credentials with Bob, who uses a wallet based on protocol B. With full interoperability, Bob can easily decrypt, read, and verify Alice’s credentials. Interoperability between different protocols is an important argument in favour of decentralized identity.

Why is interoperability important?

One of the key use cases envisioned for the use of decentralized identity in humanitarian aid is that NGO A can issue credentials to a beneficiary who can then easily share these credentials with NGO B. Interoperability allows NGOs A and B to use different decentralized identity protocols for issuance and verification, while still allowing a beneficiary to easily share credentials between the two organizations to gain access to different services.

Interoperability is important because it reduces the risk of vendor lock-in and siloed data management solutions.

Using a decentralized identity protocol with a high degree of interoperability may help mitigate risks arising from being dependent on a single vendor, both for humanitarian organizations and for beneficiaries receiving assistance. For example, decentralized identity solution Vendor A could experience a system-wide fault or suddenly cease activity. With siloed data management solutions, beneficiary data would all be lost in this scenario. However, with interoperable decentralized identity solutions, beneficiary data may still be available from decentralized identity solution Vendor B.

To date, there have only been a few attempts at demonstrating interoperability within decentralized identity. As such, the interoperability test conducted between Gravity and Tykn within the context of the DIGID project is one of the first of its kind that we are aware of.

What are the benefits of interoperability between decentralized ID solutions in the humanitarian sector?

Interoperability between decentralized ID solutions:

• facilitates the implementation of multiple digital ID solutions with no vendor lock-in
• removes inefficiencies and barriers present in current siloed beneficiary databases
• increases collaboration within and among organizations working to support similar target populations
• provides greater opportunities for market innovation within the digital ID space, driving digital ID market growth

How are Gravity and Tykn addressing interoperability within the context of the DIGID Project?

Launched by a consortium of some of the largest international NGOs in the world, the DIGID Project aims to address the issue of lack of official or recognized identity for recipients of humanitarian assistance by piloting digital identity solutions in Kenya.

This project strives to give control and ownership of personal data back to individuals, and at the same time increase collaboration between NGOs and their beneficiaries, with user consent as a key.

Earlier this year, Gravity’s digital ID solution powered the DIGID Project with the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) to help vulnerable Kenyans without a proof of identity create digital identities on Gravity’s platform and access much-needed KRCS cash assistance. While the DIGID project leverages Gravity’s identity stack built on Tezos blockchain with beneficiaries creating Gravity identity wallets, the aim is to ensure that services that are at the intersection between Gravity’s ID platform and third-parties are also able to issue and read credentials from other decentralized identity protocols.

For sustainability purposes, it is critical that any digital ID solutions that are built for the long term are as interoperable as possible.

Thus, a key next step in the DIGID Project post-pilot phase following the creation of Gravity digital IDs for KRCS aid beneficiaries was to test interoperability between Gravity’s digital ID solution and another third-party solution (in this case, Tykn’s Cloud Wallet) to show how NGOs using different decentralized identity technologies could increase collaboration between humanitarian aid organizations and their beneficiaries.

The interoperability proof of concept demonstrated how two NGOs can use different decentralized identity platforms to register and deliver assistance to the same set of beneficiaries. This is made possible by associating a beneficiary’s different Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) with each other. This needs to be done because each DID is specific to the two different decentralized identity platforms being used. Allowing for these DIDs to be associated with one another means that NGOs can use both sets of DIDs and issue credentials to both decentralized identity platforms. This is useful because it allows NGOs to share data with each other and beneficiaries without having to agree on a common identifier (such as a phone number, national ID number or system generated ID number) that is needed to identify a beneficiary between two separate systems.

Beyond this initial interoperability test within the context of the DIGID Project, Gravity and Tykn look forward to continuing to innovate together to make interoperability in the decentralized identity and humanitarian aid spaces possible for real-world use.

Gravity and Tykn are grateful to the DIGID consortium of international NGOs for making this interoperability test in the context of the DIGID Project possible.

To learn more about Gravity, visit our website at www.gravity.earth or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

—

*For example, a collaboration between two decentralized identity providers based on the Sovrin network allowed for interoperability between their respective digital identity wallets in the context of the Swiss pharmaceutical industry. Another example is an initiative to build a universal interface that allows for the verification of credentials issued using different decentralized identity protocols.

Gravity, Tykn advance interoperability of two decentralized ID solutions for the humanitarian… was originally published in Gravity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In this article, Gravity shares our learnings from the DIGID Project in Kenya. This humanitarian aid use case provides a prime example for how other organizations can use Gravity’s universal digital ID platform to increase their own aid and impact. This case study includes the following sections:

• Why are digital IDs accessible across organizations important for humanitarian action?
• What is the DIGID Project?
• Gravity Digital ID Platform Overview
• Gravity Platform Benefits for NGOs — Key Learnings
• Organizations can use the Gravity Platform to…
• The Gravity Platform can be used by beneficiaries to…
• Gravity Platform Deployment in Kenya

Why are digital IDs accessible across organizations important for humanitarian action?

Digital IDs are quickly gaining traction on a global scale. Recently, the European Union unveiled plans for a digital ID wallet for EU residents to access public and private services as a strategy to accelerate the shift to an online world.

Today, identity (ID) management remains one of the biggest challenges for humanitarian action. In fact, due to a lack of recognized proof of identity, roughly 1.5 billion individuals (World Bank, 2016) face challenges to accessing or enjoying basic rights and services, including humanitarian assistance. The current challenges regarding identity in humanitarian aid delivery include:

• Too much valuable NGO time and money spent managing duplicative enrollment efforts and inefficiencies: Every time an NGO wants to deliver aid, they must re-register beneficiaries for each project. There is also no way for NGOs working with similar populations to securely share beneficiary data across NGOs and projects, creating siloed, inefficient work streams.
• Lack of access to aid for extremely vulnerable populations: Lack of ID prevents many individuals from accessing much-needed cash-based aid. For example, prior to the DIGID project, the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) struggled to provide aid to approximately 25% of its target beneficiaries because they did not have ID (a requirement for mobile money aid distribution via the popular mobile money vendor M-PESA often used by the KRCS for cash transfer distribution).
• Lack of beneficiary data privacy and security: Currently, beneficiary identity data is stored in systems that do not provide optimal privacy and security for this sensitive data. Without a secure data system, NGOs run the risk of beneficiaries “double-dipping” to receive extra aid or, in some instances, non-qualified individuals tyring to receive aid meant for someone else.

Gravity and the DIGID consortium are tackling these challenges via portable, user-centric digital identity for humanitarian aid. Gravity helps NGOs overcome siloed aid delivery with a digital ID solution that beneficiaries can easily use to verify their identity and receive services across multiple organizations and aid projects.

What is the DIGID Project?

The Dignified Identities (DIGID) for cash assistance project aims to address the issue of lack of official or recognized identity for recipients of humanitarian cash assistance by piloting Gravity’s digital identity solution in Kenya. The DIGID Project strives to give control and ownership of personal data back to individuals, and at the same time increase collaboration between NGOs and their beneficiaries, with user consent as a key.

Launched in 2021, the DIGID Project uses Gravity’s digital ID solution to help the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) distribute direct cash transfers to vulnerable Kenyans without IDs in urban and rural, remote areas.

To address the beneficiary technology gap, Gravity also designed its digital ID platform to suit the specific needs of all types of users, ensuring that even beneficiaries with little to no access to or knowledge of technology can create digital identities to access aid services.

The DIGID Project is made possible by some of the largest humanitarian organizations in the world, with the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC), Innovation Norway, Norwegian Red Cross, Save the Children Norway, Norwegian Refugee Council and Norwegian Church Aid coming together to help tackle this challenge.

Gravity Digital ID Platform Overview

Gravity’s digital ID platform (referred to as the “Gravity Platform” moving forward) used during the DIGID Project is based on decentralized identity and blockchain technology. It is for use by NGOs, Financial Service Providers (FSPs) and aid beneficiaries.

Gravity’s digital ID platform helps the KRCS and international NGOs increase their impact by improving service delivery with ease, saving staff time and money and focusing on what’s really important: providing aid to beneficiaries in need.

The Gravity Platform prioritizes interoperability between organizations and ensures the inclusivity of vulnerable populations to access necessary aid services via persistent digital IDs. Persistent digital identities are important because they use blockchain technology to allow for the easy exchange of verifiable, consistent beneficiary data to different organizations while also protecting beneficiary data privacy and ownership.

Gravity Platform Benefits for NGOs — Key Learnings

After concluding the DIGID Project, the Gravity team met with all stakeholders to get their feedback for future projects using the Gravity Platform.

For NGOs interested in using Gravity’s digital ID solution, the DIGID Project taught us that the Gravity Platform:

Saves NGOs money and staff time in the field

The Gravity Platform makes the overall process of NGO aid distribution faster and more efficient.

Time saved:

During the DIGID project, it took approximately one minute to authenticate and verify a beneficiary with a digital ID via the Gravity Platform for aid services.

Money saved: During the DIGID Project, the KRCS confirmed the identity of beneficiaries by scanning a QR code on the beneficiary’s phone or via a paper QR code given to them at the time of their digital ID registration. The cost per beneficiary of a printed and laminated QR code is $0.30 USD, compared to $2–5 USD for a smart card typically used by the KRCS for cash distribution.

“These digital ID QR codes are good because beneficiaries won’t have to keep registering for cash transfers. It’s much easier this way for us volunteers and for the beneficiaries.”

-Kenya Red Cross Society volunteer

Helps NGOs have a quicker aid response after a crisis

The Gravity Platform allows NGOs to quickly and accurately identify beneficiaries. As previously mentioned, it took approximately one minute to authenticate and verify a beneficiary with a digital ID to ensure that the correct person was receiving the cash disbursement. This process had previously relied on a chief or community leader to be present to individually verify each beneficiary’s ID at disbursement. If the chief/community leader could not be present at the time of aid distribution, there was also the risk that a person could falsely claim to be a beneficiary in order to receive a cash disbursement meant for someone else.

“The [cash distribution] process was well organised.”

-Beneficiary, DIGID Project

Facilitates interoperability across different aid organizations and projects

The Gravity Platform streamlines humanitarian action targeting the same beneficiary populations. During the DIGID Project, the Gravity Platform successfully integrated with KRCS vendor RedRose, a beneficiary and cash distribution management system used to facilitate the distribution of direct cash transfers to beneficiaries.

Helps NGOs put more money directly into the hands of target beneficiaries

The DIGID Project is the first time that the KRCS was able to provide many beneficiaries with direct cash transfers in lieu of mobile money transfers via mobile money service M-PESA.

From the beneficiary feedback received after the DIGID Project, we learned that many beneficiaries prefer direct cash aid to M-PESA mobile money payments because the cash is put directly into their hands at the time of distribution without them having to worry about how to receive or access a mobile money payment.

By providing hard cash directly to beneficiaries at the time of distribution, the DIGID Project eliminated the need for beneficiaries to rely on more tech-savvy alternates/agents to handle M-PESA mobile money transfers on their behalf. With mobile money payments, beneficiaries may not know when they receive the payment, and in some instances, there is even the risk that an alternate/agent takes some of the money from beneficiaries without their knowledge, leaving them with less money than intended by the NGO.

Enables NGOs to provide aid to beneficiaries without ID that they could not access prior

With the Gravity Platform, it is now possible for NGOs to deliver aid to extremely vulnerable beneficiaries who are often left out of receiving services due to a lack of ID. Before this project, the KRCS struggled to provide aid to approximately 25% of its target beneficiaries because they did not have ID.

During the DIGID Project, 95% of beneficiaries in Turkana had no official ID, but were able to receive KRCS aid with digital IDs created via Gravity.

Supports all vulnerable populations, regardless of their access to or knowledge of technology

Gravity offers digital identity solutions for smartphone, basic phone and no phone users via QR codes. The Gravity Platform also works to close the technology gap by introducing beneficiaries to digital identity solutions that can help them gain access to and benefit from humanitarian aid.

Gives beneficiaries ownership and agency over their personal data

With the Gravity Platform, beneficiaries create digital IDs that allow them to control what personal data they want to share and who they want to share it with, ensuring that beneficiaries have a say in the privacy and management of their personal data at all times.

Organizations can use the Gravity Platform to:

1. Efficiently enroll beneficiaries with digital IDs

The Gravity Platform is built to help organizations support all types of beneficiaries, regardless of their access to or knowledge of technology.

Shared beneficiary enrollment via the Gravity Platform means no more re-registering the same beneficiaries every time and improved coordination between NGOs. Organizations can sign up a beneficiary for a digital ID in three easy ways:

No phone user: NGO signs up beneficiary for a digital ID via a web portal.
Basic phone user: beneficiary signs up for a digital ID via an easy-to-use USSD Menu on their phone.
Smartphone user: beneficiary signs up for a digital ID via an easy-to-use web app on their phone.

2. Easily issue credentials based on beneficiary information

NGOs manage beneficiary data all in one easy place via the Gravity Portal website. This data is encrypted and digitally signed to create a credential. The digital signature helps verify the authenticity and origin of the data accompanying it, ensuring that the beneficiary is who they say they are. It is extremely important to note that this data is securely stored in a decentralized credential repository, which ensures that no individual or third party (not even Gravity) apart from the beneficiary can access any of this data data without the beneficiary’s consent.

3. Quickly authenticate beneficiary information to ensure that aid and services provided are going to the right individual

Organisations delivering assistance and services can use the Gravity Platform to request a beneficiary’s credentials to authenticate them, ensuring that the beneficiary is who they say they are. Organisations can request beneficiary credentials either: (1) directly through the Gravity Platform or an API for beneficiaries with phones, or (2) through a paper QR code for beneficiaries who do not have a phone.

The Gravity Platform can be used by beneficiaries to:

1. Share credentials and authenticate their identity with organizations to access services

Beneficiaries can share credentials that have been requested by an organisation by giving their consent and authenticating themselves via a PIN or other means, including biometrics.

2. Manage their digital identity

Beneficiaries can view their own credentials to see the data that an NGO has collected about them. They can also request to update, delete and recover their data as needed.

Gravity Platform Deployment in Kenya

The Gravity Platform was developed through direct inputs from all types of end-users through user consultations with local communities and NGO staff. After the development phase, an additional round of user acceptance testing in a controlled environment was conducted. In April 2021, the Gravity Platform was field tested in both rural and urban settings in Kenya within the framework of the DIGID Project cash transfer program.

The cash transfer program aimed to support the Kenya Red Cross Society’s COVID-19 response to help vulnerable communities without official IDs meet their basic needs. During the DIGID pilot, the KRCS helped vulnerable Kenyans successfully sign up for digital IDs with Gravity to receive much-needed direct cash transfers.

About Gravity

Gravity builds trusted decentralized identity solutions based on blockchain technology for individuals, organizations and governments. Users leverage Gravity to safely share their personal data to access aid, financing, employment and government services. Organizations and international NGOs use Gravity to efficiently collect verifiable data for improved service delivery, interoperability and impact. Our human-centered digital ID solutions accelerate the financial inclusion and empowerment of all people, anywhere in the world. Our work includes providing digital IDs for vulnerable individuals seeking humanitarian aid, small business owners in Africa seeking financing, refugees seeking employment and thought leadership in the government identity space. Gravity is based in Nairobi, Kenya and Paris, France.

Gravity is grateful to the Kenya Red Cross Society and the DIGID consortium of international NGOs and for their support and assistance throughout the DIGID Project.

To learn more about Gravity, visit our website at www.gravity.earth or follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Case Study: Gravity digital ID solution propels Dignified Identities in Cash Programing (DIGID)… was originally published in Gravity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Gravity’s vision is to build human-centered digital ID solutions for easy, transparent and secure data sharing for all people, anywhere in the world. With Gravity, individuals and small business owners can safely store and share their personal data to access humanitarian aid, financing, employment, and government services. In cases like the DIGID project, international organizations can also leverage our digital ID solutions to efficiently collect verifiable data for improved service delivery, interoperability, and impact.

With humanitarian aid projects like DIGID, Gravity’s goal is to help end-users and partners progressively adopt and implement this decentralized identity protocol to open the door to even greater financial inclusion for vulnerable populations. The reality is that Gravity’s humanitarian aid solution supports populations who are not yet familiar with advanced blockchain technology. By taking a human-centered design approach and meeting our partners and end-users where they are at, we will continue to adapt and build our protocol on Tezos based on real-time needs.

The DIGID project is a manifestation of our ongoing collaboration with the Tezos ecosystem to bring our decentralized identity solutions to vulnerable populations of humanitarian aid recipients, refugees, and displaced persons around the world. Among the latest verifiable credential implementations recognized by W3C standards, Gravity’s decentralized identity protocol is built on Tezos to ensure that our protocol is more scalable, standardized, and transparent.

With Gravity’s protocol built on Tezos blockchain, together we can empower all individuals to access key services (humanitarian aid, financing, educational certification, e-government services) and accelerate their path toward financial inclusion. Gravity’s use cases include facilitating humanitarian aid and cash transfers to remote communities in East Africa, supply chain financing for small business owners in Kenya, and educational certification for Syrian refugees to access greater employment opportunities in Turkey.

Why Tezos?

The Tezos protocol aligns with Gravity’s high security standards and our vision for a digital identity platform that builds trusted digital identities on blockchain that are private, portable, and persistent. We believe in Tezos ecosystem’s focus on formal verification of smart contracts and on-chain governance, which allow for everyone to participate by submitting proposals to be voted on to update the Tezos environment.

According to Gravity co-founder Johannes Ebert: “The Tezos ecosystem’s democratic, community-based, decentralized form of on-chain governance is consistent with Gravity’s vision for our own ecosystem. Like Tezos, Gravity’s solution focuses on decentralizing and community-sourcing our protocol to comply with the latest W3C standards.”

Tezos also fits in with Gravity’s human-centric vision, which values community-based input and a decentralized approach to create more innovative and effective solutions that truly meet the needs of all stakeholders along the data supply chain.

Lastly, Tezos is particularly suitable for Gravity’s decentralized identity use cases due to its affordable transaction costs and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance) compatibility.

What’s on-chain?

Following Spruce’s initial implementation of the Tezos DID Method, Gravity implemented our own version of the Tezos DID Method and DID Manager.

Gravity’s strong beliefs in maximum privacy and a user’s right to be forgotten mean that we only store specific pieces of personal data on-chain. The on-chain attributes contained within the DID manager include:

• Authentication public key: Used by remote parties to verify a signature with an “authentication” purpose (in W3C terms), most frequently used during the sharing of credentials,
• AssertionMethod public key: Also for use by remote parties to verify signatures with an “assertionMethod” purpose (in W3C terms), usually used during credential issuance,
• KeyAgreement public key: Used by remote parties to compute the shared secret necessary for end to end encryption.
• Link to credential repository: A link to a dedicated space on the credential repository which allows issuers to know where to send credentials post encryption, and
• TZIP-16 metadata link: Standard that helps attach off-chain metadata to the DID manager, allowing for the inclusion of metadata views.

These attributes are all retrieved by Gravity’s specific DID Resolver which is embedded within the Universal DID Resolver to allow for the re-computation of the related DID document.

Most recently, we integrated the much-anticipated Contract Metadata (TZIP-16) standard, which makes integration, discoverability and querying of Tezos smart contracts easier and scalable for applications and wallets.

The sky’s the limit for Tezos and Gravity, and we are excited to continue growing with and learning from the global Tezos community!

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Gravity’s Decentralized Identity Protocol, Built on Tezos, To Power DIGID Project in Kenya was originally published in Gravity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This month, Gravity’s digital ID solution to support refugees in Turkey increase their employment opportunities through digital education profiles is featured in the new report “Digital Identity: An Analysis for the Humanitarian Sector” written by the Oxford Centre for Technology and Development, commissioned by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), and supported by the DIGID consortium (Norwegian Red Cross, Norwegian Refugee Council, Norwegian Church Aid, Save the Children Norway).

The report includes a case study on Gravity’s work to help refugees in Gaziantep, Turkey struggling to find employment because they do not have adequate proof of their educational experiences. As part of a pilot with the Sustainable Development Goals impact accelerator (SDGia) established by the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Syrian refugees created verifiable education profiles using Gravity’s digital ID platform that they could then share with potential employers to increase their employment prospects.

With Gravity, refugees can easily compile all of their education credentials from different livelihood training programmes all in one place and digitally share this information with potential employers to increase their employment and livelihood prospects.

According to the report written by Aiden Slavin, Franziska Putz and Dr. Emre Eren Korkmaz:

“Gravity’s work is selected as a case study here because their solution included close collaboration with four other organizations from the start. It thus offered a rife example of interoperability challenges associated with digital ID systems, as well as how the same systems may be used to overcome existing coordination challenges. Moreover, Gravity has made more documentation of this project publicly available.”

Collaboration is key to real impact and innovation, which is why Gravity builds human-centered digital ID solutions that improve interoperability between organizations. Gravity collaborated with Sertifier, Mark Labs, the Gaziantep Chamber of Industry (GSO) and the Gaziantep Chamber of Artisans and Craftsmen (GESOB) to make this work with Syrian refugees in Turkey possible.

Key takeaways from the report’s analysis of the Gravity case study in Turkey:

“Gravity’s experience in Gaziantep demonstrates the value of public-private partnerships as well as how substantial interoperability can be achieved without sacrificing data privacy or individuals’ control over their own data. The example also demonstrates a valuable use-case of how digital ID systems can help migrants throughout their journey.

“Digital ID systems are commonly piloted to support crisis response or more immediate humanitarian assistance, including initial registration for aid as well as short-term assistance, whether in the form of food or cash transfers. Gravity’s work facilitates a vital next step: helping refugees acquire and prove their education and training credentials so they can advance their level of socioeconomic inclusion. Crucially, the Gravity solution was able to help all stakeholders: beneficiaries, aid and training organizations and employers.

Through a series of expert interviews and case studies, the report shows that digital ID has great potential for use in the humanitarian sector, with benefits to organizations and affected communities alike, while also outlining its limitations and the challenges to overcome.

It is hoped that this report will be useful to anyone in the humanitarian sector looking to invest in or develop digital identity solutions like Gravity for their organization.

For the full report and additional readings, please visit the Prepare Center website hosted by the Global Preparedness Center and the American Red Cross and the DIGID website.

Interested in learning how Gravity can help your organization optimize its impact and service delivery? Contact our team.

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Case study: Gravity’s work with refugees in Turkey featured in latest report from Oxford Centre for… was originally published in Gravity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In 2019, we were selected to participate in the Sustainable Development Goals Impact Accelerator (SDGia) program in Turkey. Led by UNDP Turkey with support from the World Food Programme, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Government of Turkey, the SDGia programme is aimed at enabling market-creating innovations that help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

How can decentralized identity help improve livelihood prospects for refugees?

A particular focus of the program was addressing challenges specific to the almost 4 million strong displaced population, especially Syrian refugees, in Turkey. An initial 2 month period involved field visits to gain insights from representatives from displaced communities, aid organizations and local public institutions. These discussions helped us understand how our decentralized identity solution could address some of the challenges specific to livelihood prospects faced by persons under temporary protection in Turkey. See our blog post from 2019 for a quick recap of these challenges.

Last year, we had the opportunity to implement our decentralized identity based solution to address some of these challenges on the ground in Gaziantep, Turkey. The project’s beneficiaries were persons under temporary protection of Syrian origin who have attended vocational training and Turkish language courses at the Gaziantep Chamber of Industry (GSO) and the Gaziantep Chamber of Artisans and Craftsmen (GESOB).

Field Testing in Gaziantep, Turkey

During the project, beneficiaries were able to create decentralized identity based digital wallets to request educational credentials (in the form of digital certificates) from GSO & GESOB as proof of their training experiences. They could then share these digital certificates and other relevant information with a total of 7 enterprises (in sectors ranging from hardware and mechanical manufacturing to information technology and cosmetics) with job openings. Overtime, beneficiaries can accumulate additional relevant data in their wallets to form cohesive profiles reflective of their work and educational experiences.

Employers were also able to verify the authenticity and origin of these certificates via a verification portal, allowing them to rest assured of the job applicants’ skills and competencies.

This process had previously consisted of GSO and GESOB introducing beneficiaries to employers by visiting their premises. Digitising this process was of particular relevance during a period where beneficiaries’ mobility and social interactions were reduced because of COVID 19 restrictions.

A more detailed overview of the project and product can be found in this case study.

What did we learn?

Feedback was gathered directly from the beneficiaries during and after the onboarding sessions. Additionally, Gravity and local partner staff present during the sessions also provided their input through observations made during the sessions.

The main learnings were as follows:

• Confirmation of value proposition for beneficiaries: Overall, participants found the idea of an education credentials digital wallet very useful in terms of improved agency in managing their educational and professional credentials. Many participants enquired about how they can feed their wallets with their previous diplomas and certificates as well, and what additional features could be added.
• Ease of use for beneficiaries and implementing agents: Participants were able to sign up and create decentralized-identity based digital wallets, request and share credentials with ease thanks to the informational video and assistance by Gravity & local partner staff.
• Utility and value provided for local partners: Local implementation partners, GSO and GESOB, found the product useful as a means of decentralized data sharing and upholding beneficiaries’ data privacy and protection.
• Main points of friction during sign up: The main issues encountered(by around 5% of beneficiaries) were during sign up. Requesting and sharing credentials was relatively smooth. Among those who could not finish signing up, the main reasons were due to lack of an active SIM card and difficulties regarding a cryptographic key file upload.

What next?

Keeping in line with our user centered design approach, we will be incorporating the participants’ feedback to address the issues mentioned above and improve user experience during sign up. We have made this a priority in our product development roadmap for the next 6 months and have recruited a UI/UX expert to lead our design efforts to this end.

We will be reaching out to participants from the onboarding sessions to assess the demand for additional features as well.

We will also be continuing our engagement with our local partners to further streamline the product to their needs and that of the beneficiaries’. We have appointed a staff member in Turkey to continue discussions with the 7 enterprises that are interested in using our solution to improve their recruiting processes.

We are also keen on collaborating with other organizations providing educational and vocational skills training for livelihood prospects in Turkey and elsewhere.

We are incredibly grateful to the SDG Impact Accelerator team, UNDP Turkey, GSO & GESOB for their support and assistance throughout the project, as well as to our consortium partners Sertifier and MarkLabs for their collaboration.

A more detailed overview of the project and product can be found in this case study.

*All beneficiaries were explicitly asked for their consent regarding the taking, sharing and circulation of their photos by Gravity.earth and its partners (Sertifier, MarkLabs, GSO & GESOB). All further use of the photos by other parties is subject to permission by Gravity.Earth.

Results from the field: Improving livelihood prospects for refugees through decentralized identity… was originally published in Gravity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We recently attended the FinTech Solutions for Refugees Summit organised by Village Capital & PayPal in Berlin. We reflect on what we’ve learned from the event and from our overall experience as a start-up in the humanitarian sector.

Aside from our work to enable access to finance for small businesses, we’re passionate about using our platform to further financial inclusion for refugees and other displaced persons.

To this end, since our inception, we’ve interacted with humanitarian organizations, local and international NGOs, governments and the private sector to get an overview of what each brings to the landscape. Most importantly, we’ve had the chance to interact directly with refugees, both here in Kenya and in Turkey, to understand how our platform could help address their needs. We’ve also been helped by the invaluable research done on the subject.

But as a new-comer to the humanitarian world and moreover as a start-up, we’ve felt that a space for dialogue between different actors was still missing.

More importantly, a dialogue which deals head on with the “big questions”, i.e. sector-wide, underlying issues, was needed.

This dialogue is what we got to experience at the FinTech Solutions for Refugees Summit held recently in Berlin. Over the course of the summit, we attempted to answer some of these big questions with stakeholders across the board. From these discussions, we took away 3 learnings that we’d like to share. We hope that these will help other start-ups attempting to navigate the humanitarian sector, as well as organizations interested in working with start-ups.

#1. Work in ecosystems, not alone

Solutions which attempt to enable access to finance for refugees deal with constraints at multiple levels. Firstly, they need to consider whether there is a real demand for such a solution among refugees. Secondly, solutions which address access to financial services cannot ignore the interplay of financial service regulations at national and international levels. Next, and particularly for solutions that leverage technology, there is also the question of digital literacy, device possession and connectivity.

All of these considerations are not insurmountable, but getting past them requires input and action from different actors.

Creating an established channel for regular exchanges between start-ups, humanitarian organizations and financial services entities can help ensure that solutions are designed keeping all these considerations in mind since the outset.

Above all, it’s important that such a channel be established formally, so that all parties know that they can turn to it whenever needed rather than on ad-hoc bases.

#2. Approach refugees as you would any other customer segment

When we first started thinking of how Gravity’s platform could help refugees, we had a very different solution in mind. However, our interactions with refugees quickly led us to realise that our platform could instead be used to address more pressing needs that refugees had, i.e. improving access to livelihood opportunities, than what we’d initially imagined. We’re aware that we’re not the only ones experiencing this. Other start-ups and the private sector at large do, too.

This is perhaps because there’s a tendency to think of refugees’ needs as homogeneous across the different regions they are hosted in, the varying immigration status they may have and consequently the services they are able to avail with respect to their legal status.

Just as any other company which tests the appetite for its product through user and market research, so should companies designing products for refugees.

This means treating refugees as any other customer base by segmenting them, interacting with them and incorporating their feedback into the solution.

However, it can be difficult for start-ups to directly interact with refugees because they are often not accessible. Here is where the organizations who do have this access can play an important role by publishing research for preliminary insight. On the other hand, there need to be more opportunities created for companies to directly interact with refugees. These interactions need to be carried out in an ethical manner, perhaps guided by humanitarian organizations or other experts who are familiar with the protocol of interacting with persons of concern.

#3. Create a common language for start-ups and humanitarians

This works at two levels.

1. Especially with respect to tech solutions for refugees, both start-ups and humanitarian organizations need to do their homework to understand the other side. This comes down to articulating the capacity of a tech solution to help address functional requirements specific to a humanitarian operation. At a very basic level, start-ups need to translate their solutions’ capacity in a manner that can easily be digested by those not very familiar with technical jargon.
2. It’s often the case that there’s a mismatch in the ‘culture’ between start-ups and humanitarian organizations. By their very nature, start-ups need to focus on gaining traction in the short run. On the other hand, because of the delicacy and scale of their operations, humanitarian organizations may need multiple rounds of deliberation before they can give the green light. This becomes even more problematic when considering how a solution is funded.

Being more transparent and precise on the expected timeline for a project, mixing sources of funding to diversify the actors bearing the risk and clearly outlining each partner’s concerns can all help reduce this ‘mismatch’.

But perhaps acknowledging that this mismatch exists could be the very first step towards respecting one another’s constraints.

We’re extremely thankful to Village Capital and PayPal for providing us with this opportunity to put our heads together with all those within the ecosystem. Going forward, we hope that we’ll see more opportunities which can help unify the varying efforts to achieve the common goal of accelerating long-term, sustainable financial inclusion for refugees.

3 Takeaways as a Start-Up in the Humanitarian Sector was originally published in Gravity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Duka Diaries: How we ran into the missing middle

A handful of Sub-Saharan African countries have experienced double digit growth rates over the last decade. While these countries undoubtedly deserve all credit due for the “Africa Rising” narrative, the view from our side here in Kenya paints a slightly more nuanced picture.

The reality is that a significant number of individuals in these emerging economies have remained unable to access formal /traditional financial services. To add to this, an alarming proportion of the labour force (74%) ¹ which has driven this growth, is actually self-employed and informal.

This is why Gravity is working towards improving access to finance for this segment of self-employed, small business owners.

Over the last few months, we’ve been conducting a pilot with small shop, i.e ‘duka’ owners in Nairobi. From the field visits and interviews we’ve conducted, we observed two broad trends.

1. Widespread data scarcity is problematic for service providers.

We’re far from being the first ones to have realised that there’s a significant lack of data on the small business owner population.

This leads to a tendency to take a blanket approach towards various sub-groups, each with different business practises, risk preferences and investment needs, by clubbing them under a single “Bottom-of-the-Pyramid” or micro-enterprise label. Ultimately, this inhibits both policy makers’ and lenders’ capacities to accurately address their needs and offer corresponding products.

2. Variations in small business owners’ characteristics are not fully captured by existing frameworks

Related to the problem of data scarcity, we also noticed among our sample that small business owners were extremely varied in terms of income, level of formality and financial history.

However, we identified a significant concentration of business owners that shared 3 main characteristics:

1. They were neither completely formal nor informal,
2. They didn’t correspond to the income levels which are commonly the norm to qualify them as “survivalist”, but were far from breaking-even and/or expanding, and
3. They had previously never borrowed from a bank or micro-finance organization but instead from digital lending apps or community savings groups.

Identifying roughly the same segment we encountered as “Cuspers”, the report gives an overview of the constraints faced by them in 3 emerging economies: Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. Published in 2016, revisiting the report today is relevant given the current state of digital credit markets and trending interest caps. Since our experience has mostly been based in Kenya, we’ll be zooming in on this case.

“Squeezed” in Kenya : The unfulfilled promise of digital credit

Referring to the situation in Kenya as “squeezed” in terms of the credit market for the Cuspers, the report serves as a prelude to the concerns now being voiced by many who view the rapid expansion of digital credit in Kenya as a crisis waiting to unfold. ²

A competitive digital lending market has certainly extended access to credit for many Kenyans previously excluded from formal bank-led borrowing. However, increased competition has not pushed the cost of borrowing down, with many lending apps often charging interest at rates well above those charged by traditional banks.³ This, coupled with short loan maturity periods, has gradually accumulated into high rates of non-performing digital loans.

This underpins our belief that improving ease of access to credit is only half the battle when it comes to financial inclusion. The next and equally important half consists of ensuring that once accessible, the credit has the intended transformative effect on individual income growth, asset creation and overall well being rather than inducing more financial woes.

The elephant in the room: Information asymmetry

Part of why the positive spillovers of an increasingly open digital credit market remain far from being realised is because of information asymmetry. This exists at two levels.

1. Between borrowers and lenders, such that lenders, despite many of them relying on sophisticated credit scoring models, still rely on data from limited sources to determine the eligibility and terms of lending for a particular borrower, and
2. Among lenders themselves, largely because the existence of a credit information sharing mechanism via credit bureaux does not address the realities of digital lending. Specifically, while digital lenders are still obliged to report defaulters to credit bureaux, the frequency of reporting is outpaced by the speed with which digital loans are taken out.

This means that a borrower could potentially take out loans on multiple platforms within a single day without any single lender being aware of outstanding loans with the other lenders. This same borrower could then default on all of the loans and still only be reported to the credit bureau at the end of the month. In fact, in Kenya, as many as 14% of borrowers have reported paying off multiple loans from several digital lenders simultaneously. ⁴

Protection by design for financial health

Rightly so, Credit at the Cusp calls for an emphasis on financial health in markets where access to credit is “open” due to the expansion of digital lending. This includes safeguards both for consumer and lender protection, such as introducing a ‘learners license’ which restricts new borrowers activity as they become more seasoned. Another route could be a ‘last in last out’ rule, whereby the last lender to have extended credit to a client with already outstanding loans would be the last to be paid out in the event of a default. However, this would involve a credit bureau- like mechanism for more real time data sharing between these lenders.

We believe that ensuring financial health requires embedding safeguards for consumer protection within the digital credit framework, but without compromising on the benefits of ease of access. At Gravity, we’re trying to find this sweet spot by helping transform credit information sharing so that digital credit can deliver on its intended promise: economic empowerment for borrowers on the cusp.

We’ll be reporting back with more updates on our efforts to ensure financial health for small business owners. In the meanwhile, do reach out to us with any comments, questions or recommendations.

1. Bhorat, H. and Naidoo, K. (2014).Sub-Saharan Africa’s Twin Jobs Challenge. The Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2014/06/27/sub-saharan-africas-twin-jobs-challenge/
2. Carlos Izaguirre, J., Kaffenberger M. &, Mazer, R. (2018). It’s Time to Slow Digital Credit’s Growth in East Africa. CGAP. https://www.cgap.org/blog/its-time-slow-digital-credits-growth-east-africa
3. Owuor, V. (2019). Mobile-based lending is a double-edged sword in Kenya — helping but also spiking personal debt. Quartz Africa. https://qz.com/africa/1722613/mobile-money-lending-in-kenya-helps-but-also-spikes-debt/
4. Totolo,E. (2018). Kenya’s Digital Credit Revolution 5 Years On. FSD Kenya. https://fsdkenya.org/blog/kenyas-digital-credit-revolution-5-years-on/

Spotlight- Credit on the Cusp: Strengthening credit markets for upward mobility in Africa was originally published in Gravity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

During the first month, our focus was to explore the potential of decentralized Identity to improve the livelihoods of Syrian refugees. We had the chance to discuss for hours with people from the refugee community. They shared with us their challenges when it comes to accessing employment and education. Also, we managed to talk with decision-makers from many different organizations. These included the Turkish Directorate General of Migration, UNHCR, UNDP, ILO, the Turkish Red Crescent, and many others.

Turkey hosts more than 4 million refugees, most of them from Syria. Almost all live in towns and cities across Turkey, there are no refugee camps. The Turkish state has spent more than $30 billion on all of this. And the infrastructure that they have built so far with their partners is impressive. There is almost universal access to healthcare and education for children. And the WfP and the Turkish Red Crescent are running one of the biggest cash transfer programs in the world with 1.5 million beneficiaries.

How to find jobs for 4 million people?

Now that the emergency is under control, the big question is: How 4 million people that speak a different language be integrated into society, find jobs and live their lives in dignity?

This is a daunting task, especially when it comes to finding employment. We’ve learned that there are a whole number of barriers that refugees have to overcome to find work.

First, there’s language. The language courses offered are quite short and being in an Arabic speaking environment for most of the day makes it very hard to improve.

Second, there’s a lack of verifiability of their Syrian education credentials. Sometimes, the certificate itself is missing, sometimes it’s there but not certified by the right entity. One woman even mentioned that she could get her diploma certified by a body of the temporary government of Syria. But she is shying away from doing that out of fear of retaliation if she ever goes back and the government has changed. What makes things worse is that many Syrian refugees are well qualified. While the group we spoke with was certainly not representative, there were people with law degrees, a PhD in chemistry, and a veterinarian.

Third, there’s discrimination by employers that exploit the fact that refugees often have little legal means if they are not being paid. Fourth, quotas limit the number of Syrian refugees one company can employ.

And finally, even if all these barriers can be overcome, there’s the overall economic situation. Turkey is currently facing an unemployment rate of 15%, the highest since the 2009 recession.

The role of decentralized identity

Almost all humanitarian organizations, big and small, are scaling up livelihoods programs for skills training, education, and opportunity matching, in an attempt to help as many people as possible overcome these challenges.

But to help people efficiently, these organizations need reliable data. It’s very hard to implement the right programs and services for people if you don’t know anything about them.

In Turkey, the Directorate General of Migration (DGM) is the custodian of all data about the refugee population. But the DGM shares data only at an aggregate level and very reluctantly. The processes are also slow, it can take a UN agency month to get a breakdown of demographics and skills in a certain area.

Therefore, the organizations have started collecting data on a per-project basis. For instance, if UNDP wants to run skills training in a specific town, they first have to find out what needs and skills already exist.

So they will pay a call center to call 5000 people and ask them about their education. Two months later, the ILO runs a project to match specific people from the same town with job opportunities. They will require the same information.

How can they access the UNDP data and avoiding spending money on the same task? All this knowing that data privacy is a huge concern and the DGM does not allow for data being shared between organizations.

We think the solution lies in putting people at the center and in control of their data. Using decentralized identity, every refugee would be able to receive, store, and share data on a digital wallet. They would be in full control, without any other entity being able to access this data without their consent.

In the present example, UNDP could share the data they have collected on peoples’ digital wallets. That is, in addition to keeping a copy for themselves to run their program. Any other organization, like the ILO, could request livelihood data from the collection of beneficiaries’ wallets whenever they need to. This would trigger a notification on the beneficiaries device who can then log into a simple interface to view and answer the share request.

The wallets could also store data from other organizations. This would allow everyone to reach a much bigger population much more quickly:

The road ahead

This last month has been an amazing and humbling learning experience. Especially because it has helped us put our work into context. It became clear that this is a huge problem, and technology will only provide part of the solution. But we also realized that every person counts. And what we’ve seen has encouraged us in our vision to build a human-centered data world. One where individuals are empowered by trusted verifiable data about their identities, skills, and finances. Data, that governments, organizations, and the private sector can use to serve people better.

We are looking forward to the coming weeks and we will be working hard to get one step closer to our vision.

Learnings from the SDG Impact Accelerator was originally published in Gravity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.