Dear SheFi Community,
I hope you are all staying healthy, happy and sane wherever you are in the world as we continue to experience and navigate an unpredictable 2020.
SheFi’s vision is a financial economy built on Web 3.0 in which women are active participants and leaders, therefore creating a more inclusive, diverse and sustainable industry. I started this initiative as I saw a lack of women participating in decentralized finance (DeFi), and I wanted to change this. In the blockchain world, we talk a lot about and work on building systems for inclusivity, but we are a predominately white and male community. Let’s be clear — there is no new financial economy without Black participation, and there’s no SheFi without Black women — we need to do better.
SheFi stands with and for the Black community, seeks to fight for racial justice, equality and the abolishment of white supremacy, and condemns racism. Our feminism is intersectional, and we value all Black lives. We will work to understand racism through the lens of finance and decentralized finance and continue to work towards a more equitable financial world. As I grow SheFi, I am committed to creating an anti-racist organization with diversity, equity and inclusion embedded into all that I do — not a separate workstream or “initiative”.
It’s been 5 weeks since the murder of George Floyd and the beginning of protests in the United States and globally, but we are only in the first inning of unraveling systemic racism, interpersonal racism and internalized racism. We have a long way to go, and we need to stay energized. As of today, it has been 108 days since Breonna Taylor was murdered, and the cops still haven’t been charged with her murder.
In light of recent events, many of us in the blockchain community have felt that we need to do more when it comes to implementing our technology and using digital currencies to support organizations for Black Livelihood and racial justice. As a result, we kicked off the #CryptoForBlackLives initiative. Below I’ve included an article which helped kickstart the dialogue as well as a few actions you can take.
- The Crypto Community Needs to Stand Up and Fight Racism article
- To read and sign the pledge, click here
- To donate in cryptocurrency and be matched up to $25K, click here (ends 7/3/2020)
- To donate in US dollars and be matched up to $45K, click here
- To stay up to date on the initiative, follow @CryptoForBLM on Twitter
- To donate your earned interest on Aave, click here
- To attend the Ethereal Virtual Session featuring Bitcoin and Black America author Isaiah Jackson and a presentation by Robby Greenfield on 7/2/2020, click here
A group of us across the ecosystem worked together on the grants piece to demonstrate why crypto is a good use case for fundraising: it enables international donations as well as anonymous donations for those who don’t want to disclose personal information, while simplifying processes and overhead for the recipient organizations and broadening their potential donor pools.
Since this newsletter is blockchain focused, I am sharing links related to our community. If you have questions about resources beyond this community, you can email me or follow my personal Twitter to see what I engage with and share with others.
With love and solidarity,
Maggie Love — Founder, SheFi
