Software engineering team Tuum Tech has officially partnered with Swiss education and advocacy group Mission 89 to raise awareness for and reduce the trafficking of youth athletes using Elastos DID technology. The partnership lands on July 30, the UN’s official World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, and was originated from Elastos Orchard’s Cyber Republic Proposal #47, which first introduced the opportunity for collaboration to the Elastos community. Officially completing its passage through Cyber Republic Consensus, the DAO-based community funding mechanism of the Elastos ecosystem, the proposal received unanimous support from the Cyber Republic Council, and its implementation is already underway.
An issue which has received little attention in the public eye, child trafficking for youth athletics is a rising issue in which families in developing countries are often exploited financially and otherwise by promises of future fame and fortune for their talented child. In many circumstances, those purporting to be sports agents own an exorbitant stake in the young player’s future achievement, keeping the family and player in debt service for decades. In other cases, agents violate agreements outright, defrauding families and leaving their children stranded across the world.
As a team of business and technical development experts in the Elastos ecosystem, Tuum Tech aims to help resolve childhood trafficking by using Elastos’ industry-leading DID solution to properly identify agents, athletes, and other stakeholders in the talent acquisition and development vertical with verifiable IDs on the Elastos blockchain. Tuum Tech will also be developing a dedicated native application which can be used to verify the related individuals and their identities for purposes specifically involved with youth athletics in order to prevent fraud, deception, and other malicious schemes.
In addition to the development of a dedicated application and the utility of Elastos DIDs, Tuum also has its sights set on future business development opportunities targeted at the adoption of various elements of the Elastos tech stack. The team intends to expand its target market to local, national, and international athletics programs across Europe, and to make use of the established network of Mission 89 once a successful pilot program is implemented and proven effective.
“As a Web3 technology company, Tuum Technologies is on a mission to make self-sovereign digital identities and associated credentials easily accessible for everyone globally. By partnering with Mission89 our team now has the opportunity to bring this essential technology to sport through development of child safeguarding protocols. Our goal is to provide players, agents, and stakeholders self-sovereign IDs created and published on the Elastos blockchain facilitating genuine connections and eliminating child trafficking in sport,” said Donald Bullers, Founder of Tuum Technologies.
“At the founding of Mission 89 we saw the need to set up a globally recognised licensing and accreditation system for athlete recruitment. This partnership with Tuum Technologies sets us on the path to realising this dream. Our multi-stakeholder approach to child safeguarding and Tuum’s expertise as a leader in blockchain technologies makes this a formidable partnership to realise the goal of using digital tools to keep sport safe for all. We aim to make it easy for families to verify the authenticity of recruiters, safeguard the rights of their wards, for genuine recruiters to have a harmonised way of proving their identity and for coaches to be in tune with child safeguarding protocols”, said Lerina Bright, Executive Director, Mission 89.
For more information and insight into the collaboration between Tuum Tech and Mission 89 as they tackle child trafficking in youth athletics and further the adoption of Elastos DID technology, stay tuned here on the official Elastos Info Blog.
About Tuum Technologies
Tuum Technologies is a Web3 technology company that enables a global network of entrepreneurs, developers, academics, industry experts, and users to access the decentralized internet. As the software engineering leader of the Open Decentralized Internet space, Tuum Technologies provides a suite of Elastos powered products and services to help developers build decentralized applications and enable individuals to control data on an open web.
About Mission 89
Mission 89’s aim is to mitigate child trafficking in sports through research, education, and the implementation of mandatory regulations to keep sports training academies accountable for the safety and well-being of children in their care.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of children are smuggled across borders and sold as commodities, including promising young footballers who are trafficked by sham agents making false promises of fame, riches, and an escape route from a cycle of poverty.
Mission 89’s research into the issue will provide a detailed examination of the issue as it exists today, develop educational and vocational programs at grassroots level to empower those most vulnerable to exploitation, and establish a licensing and accreditation system to recognize legitimate institutions from sham organizations exploiting young athletes.
