The history behind a food donation to Venezuelan people.
On April 8th of 2019, more than 7,000 kilograms of chicken, rice and corn flour were distributed in a population of Venezuela.
This donation was possible thanks to weeks of planning and the effort between the Bitcoininterest.io project (who donated the cryptocurrency for the cause) and a group of crypto enthusiasts who took the responsibility of buying the food and then distributing it equally among all the population. The main idea was to do it starting in the areas where the people need more help.
The team began to donate the food roughly at 12 p.m., just after several delays in food delivery by the merchants. They started in one of the most needy areas and, as we can expect in a small town, just like a bomb explotion, the information spreaded quickly. Not even half an hour had passed when hundreds of people ran behind the trucks loaded with food, pointing in the direction where their house was, begging the team to deliver their chicken, rice and corn flour. Adults, children, elderly people, mothers with their children, some on bicycles, others on foot, everybody followed us. In each street that we circulated we found ourselves with a sea of people waiting.
Our crew was very excited about the task that we were doing, we joked with those we knew and laughed a lot, the words of gratitude of the people felt very well. Not later, our smiles gave way to tears when we were delivering food in one of the zones that is filled with people living in poverty conditions, somebody yelled us, when we looked up we saw a woman running after the trucks with a pot in her hand while asking to be given a chicken to cook it right away, she said she had more than six months without eat any meat or chicken and was very hungry. It was shocking for the team members to see that skinny lady, with torn clothes and barefoot, running desperate for a little food. We decided at that time that we should deliver a little more food to that family, and then do the same with all those families that we found in a situation of similar desperation. Later, when we recorded the day and analyzed what we saw over the townspeople, we were certain that we found at least 80 families with nothing to eat inside a high poverty rating 200’s families zone. That statistic is beyond sadness.
For hours, the group in charge of distributing the donation went through the streets of the town, delivering food at the doors of the houses to its residents and receiving blessings from people who did not give credit to what was happening.
The last two bags of food was given to two police officers, who helped us in the end of the day to organize the people of the last group, who surrounded with despair the last truck with the little food that was left. A little more than 10:00 p.m. the crew was exhausted, the donation had been a success. Pekka, on the other hand, tried to stay awake, he felt very excited about what was happening but the time difference and the exhaustion of his work beat him at 4 a.m.
April 9th, 2019 was an emotional day. Very early in the morning, Julian started sending the event information to Pekka and the members of the bitcoininterest.io community. When they began to show the photos and videos of the event there was a lot of excitement. The community of bitcoininterest.io knew that they had managed to donate food in a country where the government was preventing the entry of humanitarian aid. All of this had been possible thanks to the power cryptocurrency have to surpass borders, and the iron will of people who decided to do some help to a country in crisis.
This important donation that took place in Venezuela, had two teams that worked together.
The first team was made up of the people who distributed the donated food among the population. The leader of that group was Julián Alvarez (Cryptowild), a cryptocurrency enthusiast who has been a survivor of the Venezuelan crisis thanks to crypto mining.
Being a charitable person led him to seek donations in the crypto world, which would allow him to continue helping all those people who are in need on his little town in Venezuela.
The second team is the community of Bitcoininterest.io, who donated the cryptocurrency and of which Julian is a long time member. In the course of that time he has cultivated a true friendship with Pekka, who is one of the Bitcoin Interest founders. Their conversations about various topics finally led to Venezuelan situation, where Julian explained to Pekka in detail about how rough the situation was, and the complications that arise every day in his efforts to help the people of he’s town .
Pekka already had some knowledge of the crisis in Venezuela and the situation in which Julian lived, in the past it had helped him a few times but this time he decided to go further. He informed that Bitcoin Interest had the intention to make a donation in cryptocurrencies that would be destined for the purchase of food which would be delivered free of charge to each inhabitant of the town, or at least to the majority that was most needed. The news shocked Julian, he had never tried to help so many people, his economic limitations did’nt allow it, donate food to a town of about 7,000 people, need a lot of money. He still accepted the challenge, the idea of giving food to all the people seemed great.
Julian’s role in all this was to manage the donation money and take care of the logistics, so he gathered a team that was made up of close friends, his wife and his brother, to help him with the task. After forming the team he dedicated himself to negotiate with the chinesse food vendors of the town, he paid for the food and rented the trucks in which the food was going to be distributed. One of the objectives was introduce the merchants to accept payment in cryptocurrencies, some accepted payment in crypto while others preferred Fiat money, so the exchange platform localbitcoins.com was used to make payments through a Venezuelan bank.
The friendship between Pekka and Julián has been based on trust, this allowed the donation to be carried out transparently and with only one common goal. Even without having met in person and being thousands of kilometers away from each other, their friendship has transcended borders. And 7,000 people are grateful today with Bitcoin Interest helping efforts.
We want to thank deeply to all Bitcoin Interest Community who performed a task that was beyond every political, country and economical barrier.
