Geena Dunne Anderson, or G.D Anderson as she is better known, is one of those people who appears to have more hours in a day than most. For the last six years she has been running The Cova Project, a charity she founded in 2018 with a mission of eliminating period poverty, focusing primarily on Sub-Saharan Africa and West Africa.
Anderson is based in Australia, but The Cova Project journey started when she was working for a nonprofit in Namibia and saw that many women were struggling to afford basic sanitary products. To Anderson this seemed like a problem that could be solved with the right approach and the right amount of funding, and so the newly formed Cova team started working to supply African communities with menstrual cups, which are often cited as a more sustainable solution that will last a number of years.
In her nonprofit work, Anderson became painfully familiar with some of the challenges and nuances that charities faced such as cross-border funds transfers to charity partners, particularly in countries with unreliable banking systems. She also worked hard to make charity more personal, so that donors had a clear idea of what the money was being spent on. So when she discovered crypto and Web3, Anderson saw this emerging technology as a conduit for change in her traditionally conservative sector.
Anderson launched her Web3 project Honey Badges in 2022 to help fund change makers around the world through NFTs and to create a community of the next generation of tech savvy philanthropists.
“I purposely wanted it to be separate from The Cova Project, which has a very traditional donor base who have no risk appetite or desire to operate in a Web3 environment,” explains Anderson.
After testing the waters with a smaller collection, Cova Dignity, on the Ethereum blockchain and garnering a lot of interest from high profile Web3 players like Randi Zuckerberg, Anderson made a conscious decision to start a parallel project that would be crypto-native and appeal to the Web3 audience. She chose the Solana blockchain as the home of Honey Badges, which was a highly intentional decision. According to Anderson, it was much cheaper for people to mint on Solana, and it was in her eyes the more sustainable option, as the launch took place before Ethereum's upgrade to a less carbon-intensive proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.
Interestingly, Anderson also noted a lack of gender diversity on Solana at the time — a disparity she wanted to personally contribute to balancing out: “I wanted more women to learn about Solana and participate in multiple ecosystems, not just Ethereum,” says Anderson.
And so Honey Badges were born — a 10,100-item profile picture (PFP) collection of adorable honey badgers created by the incredibly talented Australian artist Aslan Ruby (aka Sarana Haeata). This particular animal was chosen for its resilience, resourcefulness and ability to stand up to creatures big and scary.
One thing that became increasingly evident is Anderson’s ability to gather the right types of people around herself — people with the same amount of passion, dedication and ability to give. From Aslan Ruby who created the art, to the badge holders and various cheerleaders along the way, Anderson’s unwavering sense of purpose attracts like-minded people who support her causes.
Honey Badges community is run as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), where the decisions on grant allocations are voted on by the community of NFT holders. The leadership of the DAO, the Board of Badges, consists of 10 people periodically elected by the community.
“Our community is 99% women, many of whom are very accomplished and hold senior roles within various organizations, so we are lucky to have a leadership group that is frankly way too overqualified to work on a project like Honey Badges but who love it and feel strongly aligned with the mission,” gushes Anderson.
The demographic of the Honey Badges is yet again a testament of Anderson’s ability to communicate her mission and purpose so clearly as to attract this calibre of dedicated holders, who even in the depth of crypto winter are highly engaged and participating in running the DAO. “We are small but an incredibly passionate community,” says Anderson.
Over the last 18 months Honey Badges have supported 11 individual changemakers in a variety of causes, including providing education to children in Liberia, supporting refugee camps in Uganda and LGBTQ activist in Nigeria. The grants recipients are voted on by the Honey Badges community and are individuals who may often be excluded from more traditional charity or grant programs.
Anderson believes that decentralized philanthropy is the future. “This peer-to-peer funding approach makes it more personal. Our grant recipients also become part of the Honey Badges community,” she explains. As an NFT holder you not only get to choose what project your funds support but you can also build meaningful relationships with these changemakers.
The DAO has also been producing regular Impact Reports outlining the grants issued and showcasing the changemakers. “These reports came about because the DAO leadership team really wanted something they could share with their friends and family, to show the impact and the work we have been doing as a community,” explains Anderson. In a fast-paced world of Web3, these reports are important documentation of the impressive achievements of this dedicated group of individuals.
Anderson unequivocally believes that this decentralized way of operating brings greater transparency along with more financial freedom and inclusivity for unbanked and underserved communities. She thinks this is game-changing in terms of impact.
But she is under no pretence: We are still a while away from this technology becoming truly integrated, she recognizes.
Honey Badges started off as an innovative alternative to fundraise for impact when the traditional sources of funding completely dried up during the pandemic years. Now we see people slowly trickling out of Web3, which leaves projects like the Honey Badges running mostly on fumes of enthusiasm of their core community.
“We were never a typical PFP project, we are a membership token first and foremost. Coming out of this crypto winter — if and when it ends — we want to remain relevant and continue being strategic in terms of the value we bring,” says Anderson.
Anderson is no stranger to practicing resilience in the face of a challenge. When she started The Cova Project she recalls being told over and again that menstrual cups were not the solution and she needs to “go back to the old ways” of solving period poverty. Today, The Cova Project is one of the leading cup projects in the world that works with both governments and large NGOs and has supplied 24,000 girls with menstrual cups. So with a little bit of luck and a ton of Anderson’s perseverance, she feels no doubt Honey Badges will eventually become the philanthropic heavy hitter of Web3.
Anderson is a thoughtful and intentional leader. There is an underlying theme of supporting women that touches everything that Anderson does. From choosing a blockchain and promoting women’s tech upskilling to how she creates Cova Project’s marketing campaigns, inclusivity of women as community members, donors or grantees, is always on the top of Anderson’s priority list.
If you would like to experience some of that G.D Anderson infectious resolution first hand, you can catch her speaking at SXSW Sydney in October 2023 or at the Women Who Innovate 2023 fringe event that she is organizing alongside our BFF Michelle Reeves and an Australian Olympian Libby Trickett.
Read More: Aslan Ruby's Sarana Haeata Is 'Relinquishing Control' And Embracing The Digital Art Movement
Liya Dashkina is a VC, contributor to a number of DAOs, web3 consultant, chapter lead at the Australian DeFi Association and an advocate for women in web3.
This article and all the information in it does not constitute financial advice. If you don’t want to invest money or time in Web3, you don’t have to. As always: Do your own research.
