Zcash Education Initiative for Latin America

[EmilioNM]

Zcash EduLATAM: university learning and hackathon platform - General - Zcash Community Forum

Zcash EduLATAM: University Education & Hackathon Program

Hey everyone. I know this is long, but I really need you to read the full proposal. We’re not pitching an idea here—we’re asking you to help us scale something we’ve already proven works.

A Quick Background

About a year ago, my friend Alejandro and I built NortEdu. It was an online platform where university students in Mexico could learn web development and earn official extracurricular credits that count toward graduation. Mexican universities require students to complete 150+ hours of these activities, and they’re usually boring cultural events or sports that don’t teach you anything useful.

So we thought, what if students could earn those same credits by learning to code? We built the platform, went through all the bureaucracy to get it officially approved by the University of Colima, integrated it with their accreditation system, and launched it.

It worked. We got over 300 students enrolled. The university was happy. Students were happy because they could finally complete their requirements from home while learning something valuable.

But we ran out of money. We spent around $5,000 of our own savings keeping it alive, and as students ourselves, that’s a lot. We couldn’t charge users because it was educational, so eventually we had to pause the whole thing.

Here’s the thing though: we learned exactly how to navigate university bureaucracy, get courses accredited, manage hundreds of users, and deliver something institutions actually recognize and value.

What We Want to Do Now

We want to restart that platform, but this time focused entirely on Zcash and privacy education in Spanish.

Right now, crypto adoption in Mexico and Latin America is exploding. People are buying Bitcoin, sending remittances, investing in DeFi. But almost nobody understands privacy. When I talk to my peers about Zcash, they’ve literally never heard of it. When I explain shielded transactions, their minds are blown because they didn’t even know that was possible.

All the good educational content about blockchain and privacy is in English. Spanish speakers are stuck watching auto-translated YouTube videos with no structure, no clear path from “I’m curious” to “I can actually build something.”

We want to change that by creating:

A bilingual educational platform where students take courses on blockchain fundamentals, privacy and cryptography, Zcash architecture, wallet development, and real-world privacy practices. High-quality videos, Spanish and English captions, quizzes, an AI chatbot for support, progress tracking—the whole thing.

University credit accreditation so students earn official credits toward graduation by completing our courses. This is huge because it guarantees participation. Students need these credits anyway, so we’re not competing for their attention—we’re giving them a way to fulfill requirements while learning something that actually matters.

Campus talks and Zcash student clubs at four major universities: University of Colima (already confirmed), Universidad de Guadalajara, Tec de Monterrey, and UNAM in Mexico City. We’ll go in person, give talks, demo the platform, and recruit students to form clubs where they can collaborate on projects.

Hackathons with real prizes where students build actual Zcash projects. We’re planning at least two during the grant period—mobile wallets, privacy tools, payment integrations, identity systems, whatever they come up with. Top teams get $500-$1,000 to keep developing, and we’ll encourage them to open-source their work and apply for future Zcash grants.

Public expansion after we prove it works with universities. Anyone in Latin America can sign up, take the courses, and get a certificate endorsed by our partner universities.

Why This Actually Works

Most people asking for grants are pitching ideas. We’re asking you to fund something we’ve already done successfully once before. We have the platform code. We have university relationships. We know the approval process. We’re not starting from scratch.

Mexican universities require extracurricular credits, so we have a built-in audience. Students don’t just want to take our courses—they need to. That’s guaranteed participation from day one.

We’re not random developers on the internet. We’re working with actual universities, which means official endorsements, real certificates, access to thousands of students, and long-term sustainability.

We’re Mexican students. We know how universities here work. We understand what our peers care about. We’re not outsiders trying to impose a Western solution—we’re insiders building for our own community.

Timing is perfect. Mexico is one of the top countries for crypto adoption globally, but privacy education is nonexistent. Universities want to offer relevant, modern content. Privacy tech is a hot topic. The moment is now.

Nobody else is doing this. There’s no Spanish-language, university-accredited Zcash education program. We’re filling a gap that nobody else is even addressing.

What We’re Asking For

We’re requesting $60,000 to cover four main milestones over about 10 months:

• Rebrand the platform for Zcash and design the full curriculum

• Produce the actual course content and run a beta with University of Colima students

• Do campus talks at three more universities and run our first hackathon

• Launch publicly and implement the certificate system

There’s an optional fifth milestone for $15,000 if you want us to run more hackathons and expand to universities outside Mexico like Colombia, Argentina, or Chile.

Budget breakdown: $6k for equipment and hosting, $9k for travel and services, $35k for team compensation over 8-10 months of part-time work, $5k for hackathon prizes, and $5k contingency.

What You’ll Get

If you fund this, we’ll deliver 800+ students trained in Zcash and privacy across four universities, open-source projects from hackathons, a sustainable educational resource for all of Latin America, and a real pipeline of Spanish-speaking developers who can contribute to the Zcash ecosystem.

We’re targeting 60% course completion rates, at least 24 hackathon teams total, and at least five students or teams applying for future Zcash grants within six months of finishing the program.

Please Read the Full Proposal

I know this post is already long and the full proposal is way longer. But we’re talking about partnering with established universities to build a real student base for Zcash education. This isn’t theoretical—it’s something we’ve proven works and want to do again at a bigger scale.

Full proposal with all the details, milestones, timelines, budget breakdown, risk assessment, and everything else is here:

Zcash EduLATAM: university learning and hackathon platform · Issue #127 · ZcashCommunityGrants/zcashcommunitygrants · GitHub

Thanks for taking the time. Happy to answer any questions.

[gordonesTV]

Greetings, @EmilioNM ! Welcome to Zcash!

I have carefully read your proposal and I find it quite ambitious. It rightly targets a very important area (in my opinion) to exploit in Zcash: universities, since they are home not only to future users, but also future developers.

I don’t doubt your technical abilities, but before making a proposal of this magnitude, if I were you, I would get involved in the Spanish-speaking Zcash community to make yourself known, since we speak your language there.

In addition, we can even support you with your proposal and work as a team. Together we are stronger.

Before organizing a hackathon (which we at Zcash know involves a lot of work), it would be great to see you organize some meetups in your town and at your university to gauge how much traction you have and how much real interest there is in learning about privacy and Zcash.

It would also be great to see your contributions and those of your friends on zcashesp.com.

Good luck with your proposal, and I repeat: we look forward to hearing from you at Zcash en Español.

[EmilioNM]

@gordonesTV Hi, hey, sorry for making this so long I really want you to be able to find all the answers to your questions here, explained as specifically as possible. If you still have more questions afterward, I’ll be glad to read your message.

Honestly, I want to explain why my proposal isn’t as ambitious as it might seem at first glance, and how we plan to move forward in a completely realistic way.

We already have proven experience. At the University of Colima, we carried out something very similar: we taught web development courses, created an educational platform, and taught PHP, JavaScript, and the use of artificial intelligence applied to web development. The methodology and materials already exist; now we simply want to scale this model with your support, but focused on Zcash — to teach about digital privacy, decentralization, and blockchain technology.

Privacy and context in Mexico

In Mexico, and in much of Latin America, there’s a growing concern about digital privacy.
I can give you several concrete examples: the government has tried to create systems where, to obtain a phone number, you must register your national ID (CURP), allowing authorities to track people at any time. There are also cases where bank accounts are frozen for unclear reasons, or personal data gets leaked due to poor handling or cyberattacks.

Zcash can help change this situation by providing tools that enable private transactions, identity protection, and safer ways to communicate and operate in the digital space. We want to share and teach all this from an educational, not just technical, approach.

Crypto education with real technical grounding

We also see a lot of interest in cryptocurrencies, but without a solid technical foundation. Most young people know Bitcoin’s price or the names of other coins but don’t understand what blockchain is — or that it can be used to build web apps, social networks, or censorship-resistant tools.
When I had the chance to collaborate with Algorand, I learned that blockchain can serve as the backbone for almost any decentralized application. That’s the type of knowledge we want to bring to students — understanding the technology’s potential, not just the market speculation.

Institutional support

We have direct support from the University of Colima.
We already have open doors, guidance from professors, and contact with key figures (like the university’s general counsel and rector). This ensures that instead of hearing “no,” we get help to find the way to make it possible.

Additionally, the university allows us to issue official certificates and accredit cultural or sports hours to participating students. This is key because every university student must complete a certain number of hours to progress through semesters — meaning we’ll have strong participation without needing to enforce it.

Some professors are also willing to join as mentors or speakers, which adds an extra academic incentive.

Step-by-step plan (milestones)

In milestones two and three, we’ll start at the University of Colima, where we’ll demonstrate — with measurable data like attendance, surveys, certificates, and student projects — that the model truly works.

Once we achieve that, the next milestone will be expanding to other universities we’ve already connected with through our previous project, Nortedu, and other institutional relationships.

We can share metrics, signed documents, and certificates as we progress so everything remains transparent.

The idea is to test first, measure, and then scale — reducing any risk.

Collaboration with the community

We’ve already engaged with the Zcash en Español community, received advice and support, and found a project that aligns perfectly with our vision — a Zcash Club in Querétaro.
With this initiative, we could collaborate so that our efforts have impact in both Colima and Querétaro, giving us stronger metrics and a more solid foundation for future milestones.

Thanks to our student network and contacts at other universities, it would also be possible to replicate and expand the model over time.

[gordonesTV]

Good luck!

[yoditar]

Hi Emilio!

It’s nice to see that the message of financial privacy with Zcash is of interest to university students in Latin America. Education is essential for teaching the value of privacy, and universities are an excellent place to start creating ideas and implementing projects that help build real opportunities for citizens of countries such as Mexico and others in Latin America. This is even more important when they need financial privacy to protect themselves from various threats in the region (organized crime, corruption, surveillance, etc.).

In the Zcash community in Spanish, we have a lot of content (articles, videos, live streams, etc.) that could help take those first steps in training students at the Mexican universities you mention. For more than three years, we have created and translated a lot of content. We could even help with these training activities by collaborating on online talks. I think this could allow students to integrate into the global Zcash community to learn more about the ecosystem and begin collaborating on existing projects or proposing their own.

On the other hand, it would be interesting to start a first pilot project in which the global Zcash community can see this proposal implemented on a small scale. This could generate more confidence in the project’s potential.

One way to do this could be to create a first Zcash university club focused on programming to implement that pilot program. Preferably a university where you are active to support, lead, plan, execute, and evaluate the program. Then, you could share the results on the Zcash forum. In the Spanish-speaking Zcash community, we have a project called Club Zcash, which you could join to receive our support.

On the other hand, Zcash needs programmers, and more are needed in Latin America, a region with great potential. But why limit it to programmers? There is a lot of talent in different areas at the university, and it would be interesting to invite other professionals to join Zcash to learn and contribute value. This would send a clear message that Zcash and cryptocurrencies are not just for programmers, but for anyone who wants to build in education, community building, marketing, law, etc. Imagine a Zcash university club in Mexico with students from different disciplines talking, contributing ideas, and building together the financial privacy technology that will shape tomorrow’s world. A development project without the help of other disciplines is an incomplete project. This would be very useful in preparing future teams that want to compete in Zcash Hackathons like the one that is active now.

There are many projects we can build together. I invite you to join the Hispanic Zcash community and the global community (ZecHub, Zk Av Club, etc.), learn about the dynamics, and see how you and other students could start collaborating to help with the adoption of Zcash in Latin America.

We have a lot of work ahead of us, and it would be great to see you actively collaborating in different areas of the ecosystem.

Everything I have mentioned would allow you to build a reputation when applying for grants with a proposal and funding like the one you are requesting.

We hope to see you active in the Spanish-speaking and global Zcash community!

PS: All of the above are some ideas (we can discuss others) that I think are important to consider when you are new to the Zcash community and want to apply for a grant. This is even more important when it is difficult to see how, at the end of this education project, the global Zcash community will be able to see the return on investment in more qualified developers joining Zcash and projects with an impact in the region or the world, beyond the tentative projection that can be given before the project has started. The facts and initial results will be the best demonstration of your project’s potential. This builds trust, reputation, and support from the entire Zcash community.

Good luck!

[EmilioNM]

Hi @yoditar, thanks a lot for your thoughtful reply and for the support

I completely understand – and I actually agree – that it’s hard to evaluate an education/community grant from someone who is new to the Zcash community. You don’t have much history to judge me by yet, and that’s a very valid concern.

Because of that, I’d really like the committee to see two things in addition to my “newness”:

• I’m new to this community, but I’m not new to this kind of university project. With NortEdu we already ran a similar program and onboarded around 300 students into web-development courses, working directly with university staff. I’m sending that material privately to ZCG so they can verify it.

• We are not starting from zero audience. The University of Colima (and other universities we’re talking to) have confirmed that they can give students:

  • accredited extra-curricular hours,

  • small grade bonuses (“décimas”), and

  • official certificates with the university logo.

This means a percentage of the student body doesn’t need to be “found” with marketing – they will actively look for these activities because they need those hours and certificates to graduate. Our job is to turn that existing demand into long-term interest in Zcash and privacy.

I also know the budget can look high for someone who just arrived, and that’s why I structured the proposal with three options. I’m very happy to start with Option 1 only and prove myself with clear metrics (enrolments, completions, events, etc.) before the community considers scaling anything up. If you or ZCG prefer a smaller pilot first, I’m completely on board with that.

Many education proposals focus mainly on “we will post content on Instagram / YouTube”. Content is important, but getting real usage and real learners is much harder. What I’m trying to offer is not just content, but a concrete distribution channel that already exists inside the universities, with incentives aligned for students and professors.

So yes, I know I’m new here, and it’s fair if that costs me some points. I only ask that my previous experience with university projects and the existing institutional support also count in the evaluation. If I get the chance to run even the smallest version of this project, I’m confident I can deliver the metrics I promised and not disappoint the community.

Thanks again for the guidance – I really appreciate it and I’m adjusting the proposal with this in mind.

Emilio