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8 Min
BY ALISON ALEXANDER FOR ADELLO MAGAZINE
I’m returning to this point. First, a little about myself.
In 1988, I started what would become a 32-year career in public services. I was 20, and without formal qualifications, I already had nearly five years of work experience.
That means I was only 15 years old when I started working. And yes, in England, it was and still is illegal to work full-time at that age.
At that point in my life, I was one of the forgotten ones. A teenager living in a children’s home. Instead of a school, I was given an opportunity to work. And that was the best thing that could have happened to me.
For the next 3 years, while residing in a children’s home, I traveled across the UK. Then, I received a sudden invitation to Canada to advise professionals and young people. It was a significant opportunity that presented a major challenge: as a kid in care, my birth certificate was unavailable. After intense effort in a short time, we finally located it at the last minute. With my passport secured, I embarked on my first flight to Toronto, Canada, where I attended a conference as an adviser.
I couldn’t believe what was happening to me – and, as I said, my life changed forever.
Let’s go back to the missing passport that nearly curtained my opportunity. Who knows where I would be if I had not gotten on that plane? My destiny relied on a piece of paper to which I didn’t have access. What’s even harder to believe is that in 2022, many are in the same powerless position. This was my first “Aha! moment” with Web3 when I realized how it could revolutionize people’s lives—especially those in disadvantaged and underrepresented communities.
So, at 18, after traveling globally and working with disadvantaged youth, I founded The International Youth In Care Network charity. Our goal was to link youth in care networks across the globe to strengthen our voices and help us learn from each other.
I suppose I could have been called an entrepreneur, using today’s language.
After working with many educated people, I realized I needed more education to progress. This was my second “Aha! moment” about how Web3 transforms lives.
I took myself back to school—in the UK, we call it college if you are over 18 years of age—to get my primary education. While doing this, I continued running the charity pro bono. It wasn’t a paid role. Two years of education and volunteering later, I finally had some basic qualifications under my belt to add to my work experience, so I was ready to get a paid job.
My first full-time job as a 20-year-old was as a Community Worker. No, it was not a Web3 community manager! But there are tons of similarities, especially because of its community focus—”Aha moment” number 3.
Back then, my community worker role had a twofold purpose:
I’ve spent my life working with and for people—especially young people—who are disaffected and disadvantaged because of their gender, race, sexual orientation, and class. Perhaps I’ve done this because, for a large part of my life, I have been disadvantaged myself on many levels:
After 32 years in the public sector, trying to bring change to children and communities, I stepped into virtual reality. VR engages our thinking, feeling, and behavior, allowing us to learn four times faster. The VR I developed allowed anyone to walk in the footsteps of children victims of criminal or sexual exploitation being harmed by adults. As Maya Angelou famously said: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
I believe in the transformational impact of an experiential approach because my life experience has shaped the person I am now: an activist and pragmatist—what Kolb’s learning styles would define as a Doer.
Now, the metaverse is offering that impact opportunity with communities. A year ago, I ventured further into Web3 with a team of other developers led by Pere Pérez, with whom I developed my VR projects.
Metacampus helps anyone thrive in Web3 by growing their knowledge, helping them master technology tools, and embracing the Web3 culture. At the same time, we are also empowering new start-ups in the Web3 ecosystem, creating a circular system that matches the connected essence of the virtual economy.
A year later, Web3 continues to inspire me every day.
I believe Web3 tools can rebalance society, bringing more significant equity to the world, giving people control over their own lives, and providing all people with the opportunity to shape, influence, design, and determine the future through decentralization.
Many are the uses for Web3 tools, but let me focus on those I mentioned earlier. I think they can have a significant impact:
Blockchain— as we all know—is an immutable ledger that facilitates the process of recording transactions and tracking assets. Those assets can be tangible—a birth certification, a passport, a certificate of education, an endorsement of experience—or intangible—personal memories.
Let’s imagine, for instance, that when a person is born, they get a tangible asset on the Blockchain instead of a paper copy of their birth certificate—unlike my story. This means the individual is in control of their identity. They can secure a passport or a driving license. With a birth certificate on the Blockchain, individuals can retrieve it at any time, ensuring protection from the negative behaviors of others. Storing passports on the Blockchain could help reduce child trafficking or sexual exploitation by securely verifying their age and identity.
The same benefit applies to a working environment. Using the Blockchain to record contracts reduces the likelihood of people being abused by their employers.
Storing information on-chain can help individuals fleeing persecution or war. For instance, a migrant with no proof of identity in the new country. A simple deposit of information onto a blockchain would protect the person’s identity and, therefore, their rights. This empowers the person, but it would also help society because they can immediately engage in their communities, economically and socially.
This highlights how blockchain enables people to record their achievements securely in an immutable ledger. For instance, young people who experience disadvantage and disaffection often don’t perform well in an educational environment but may be outstanding in other areas, such as gaming and coding or have a high level of social skills and emotional intelligence. Capturing this performance on an immutable ledger opens up the job market to them, as prospective employers can check their performance record on the Blockchain.
Rewarding experience as highly as education allows us to address some existing inequalities. This brings me to my final point: community.
34 years ago, I worked as a community worker. What I see and experience in Web3 today is very similar to what I saw back then. People want to belong. From my experience in Web3, I notice that people, individuals from all sectors—art, finance, tech, film, social, entertainment, and so on—want to be community members. Society is coming full circle: in the ’60s and ’70s, we were community-orientated. In the late ’80s, 90, and early 2000s, we shifted and focused on individuals; now, there is a movement back to a community-focused.
In Web3, new communities are not defined by geographic or family boundaries. There are no borders or boundaries. Communities form around meaningful aspects that preserve individual identities: interests, skills, and knowledge. Web2 companies transitioning to Web3 are crucially establishing similar relationships with companies. Individuals no longer wish to be perceived merely as customers; they seek to be acknowledged and treated as community members. Consequently, they desire to contribute to the decisions of companies they support.
In short, and going back to the title of this article, Web3 is for the people by the people. Twelve months ago, I entered Web3 as a 53-year-old woman. I had no tech experience, and I questioned myself daily. Today, literally thousands of hours of learning later, I am even more inspired and assertive in my opinion that the tools of Web3 are designed to secure technology and cultural revolution.