Lansing has two significant problems: poverty and gun violence. The Fledge is on a mission to use entrepreneurialism to end poverty and to end gun violence. Entrepreneurialism encompasses using critical thinking, systems thinking, creativity, innovation and tech, including blockchain, smart contracts, and crypto tools.

Lansing School District Accelerator

Lansing has an organization called the Lansing Promise who works to ensure that all students of the Lansing School District have access to opportunities for success. Broadly defining success as students with happy and prosperous futures. The Fledge is teaming with the Lansing Promise to start an accelerator within a pilot school (Lansing Everett) where we combine a start up weekend format to create ideas and teams, incubate the ideas and teams, and then accelerate the ideas ending in a pitch competition for further funding and opportunity to pilot in other schools.

Blockchain and smart contracts role in the accelerator

We have created a coin Fledge Coin (FLDG) and a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) associated with it. We are funding the initial projects (the incubation phase) using FLDG. The FLDG can be distributed as rewards for Customer Interviews, bartering for services, and create and vote on proposals in the DAO.