On December 15, the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) announced its collaboration with the UNHCR to test a Stellar-powered digital cash disbursement mechanism for distributing funds to Ukrainian refugees.
The UNHCR is the organization charged with looking out for that fleeing persecution or political upheaval.
The concept is being tested out initially in the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv, Lviv, and Vinnytsia, where many people fled after Russian missile attacks destroyed their homes or sought refuge for their families.
How can people help?
Users must download Vibrant, a non-custodial mobile digital wallet based on Stellar that offers a safe place to store and transfer assets in USDC, a well-known stablecoin tied to the dollar, to participate.
The recipients then have the option of converting the received USDC to their local currency, U.S. dollars or euros, and withdrawing their money from one of the hundreds of thousands of MoneyGram sites worldwide.
What’s the take of officials on Crypto?
In the past, according to Stellar executives, humanitarian aid projects had to be geographically constrained, but the use of cryptocurrencies allows them to scale globally, raising worries from others.
The use of bitcoin to provide humanitarian help is a suitable use case, according to Oleksandr Bornyakov, Ukraine’s deputy minister for digital transformation, and it will be essential for the safety of his population.
Stellar partners with IRC, an NGO
The International Rescue Committee (IRC), an NGO established to assist persons who are being persecuted for political, religious, or ethnic reasons, and Stellar have already helped 33 of the 100 people they intend to assist before the end of the year.
