The innovative water wheels introduced in Pakistan by Tayaba in action Tayaba Organisation
Tayaba, an NGO set up by an LSE graduate, is the first Pakistani NGO and one of the first globally to implement block chain based NFT technology for fundraising purposes. The innovative use of this technology has already raised over 2 million rupees for the charity.
Former Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship student, Bilal Bin Saqib - who has been recognised by the Prime Minister for his volunteering work - set up Tayaba, a charity which aims to improve access to clean water for communities in Pakistan, in 2016.
While on a trip to Burkina Faso and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bilal came across communities that had found a unique way to deal with water inaccessibility. Instead of carrying water on their heads, women pulled clean water in plastic wheel containers connected to metal bars.
This encouraged Bilal to introduce water wheels to water-deprived communities in Pakistan. He named the charity after his mother, Tayaba, after being inspired by her words: “the best gift is giving someone water to drink".
After COVID-19 halted in-person fundraising events for Tayaba, Bilal and his team - which also includes LSE alumna, Nida Yousaf Sheikh (MSc Psychology of Economic Life, 2019) - decided to launch and auction a limited collection of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) including trading cards, images and gifs.
A NFT is essentially a digital asset which can include art, music, virtual objects from video games, trading cards, videos and even tweets. NFT certifies a digital asset to be unique and therefore not interchangeable.
Unlike cryptocurrencies, NFT offers something beyond a direct monetary donation. It also avoids the drawbacks of conventional online donation methods which can include filling out lengthy forms and manually inputting credit card information, making it much for convenient.
Commenting on the innovative use of NFTs by Tayaba, Bilal Bin Saqib said: “By making the first move with NFT technology, we aim to raise much-needed awareness for our water accessibility initiative. We also want to inspire local charities and Not-for-Profits to be forward-thinking and make this into a win-win situation for charity, corporates, and the crypto community: driving brand awareness and raising funds for charitable organisations doing amazing work in Pakistan.
“The initiative represents a unique and tangible use-case as it gains more acceptance across the world. The fundraising campaign immediately gained traction on social media platforms with an increasing number of people showing interest in the initiative due to its creativity and technological ingenuity.”