The Chopra Foundation is partnering with Hedera Hashgraph to develop an online, freely accessible platform to share the verified set of Never Alone Initiative resources. The mission of the Chopra Foundation is to advance the cause of mind/body spiritual healing, education, and research through fundraising for selected projects.
The objective is to fight rising suicide rates and support mental and emotional well-being. This involves building a global content platform, in collaboration with CG Creative Studios, based on the Hedera Consensus Service. The Hedera Consensus Service enables creation of a digital fingerprint for content – guaranteeing authentic, tamper-proof resources for those in need
Deepak Chopra, Founder and Chairman of The Chopra Foundation said, “Our partnership with Hedera enables us to fulfill a long-time vision of building a trusted network offering a ‘digital fingerprint’ to democratize access to mental and emotional health resources and support visionary grassroots leadership for health. With suicide rates and mental health issues rising rapidly, particularly amidst the global pandemic, people need access to authentic and trustworthy information. We knew that Hedera Hashgraph’s distributed ledger technology offered the opportunity. At the same time, we quickly found that only Hedera Hashgraph’s Consensus Service also offered the ability to guarantee the authenticity of content through a verifiable, timestamped log of events.”
The Chopra Foundation and Never Alone
The Chopra Foundation is a 501 (c) (3) organisation (#36-4793898) dedicated to:
- improving health and well-being
- cultivating spiritual knowledge
- expanding consciousness
- promoting world peace to all members of the human family.
Never Alone seeks to:
- serve a global community
- deliver secure access to scientific research
- work with mental health and wellness experts
- make use of pragmatic tools and practices for everyday use.
The anticipated platform, intended to scale globally, will be open to all. It will enable mental health and wellness experts – from medical professionals to meditation experts – to upload content into a service registry.
Once uploaded the content is logged on the Hedera Consensus Service which gives it a digital fingerprint. This provides a guarantee of where that content resides. It also makes it tamperproof.
Users gain access by simply logging into the platform. They can then access content they know is trustworthy (in that it cannot have been altered or falsified)
The development of Never Alone, and its funding
The development of Never Alone on the Hedera network will involve the creation of a digital token – the Never Alone token. This will act as a way to incentivise and remunerate content creators and healthcare workers for their participation on the platform.
The Chopra Foundation’s intent is that Never Alone will attracting funding via donations, with each donation verifiable and traceable via smart contracts on the Hedera Network. This will enable donors to review the use of the funds with total transparency.
Also planned for the platform is a global real-time resource finder. The ‘NeverAlone – True Friend’ will offer individuals the ability to connect, 24/7, with a variety of curated resources, including:
- volunteers
- counsellors
- mental health experts/professionals
- local support organisations
- hospitals on their location.
Mance Harmon, CEO of Hedera Hashgraph, said, “The Hedera Consensus Service has wide-ranging capabilities in the field of content authentication. The combination of high throughput and low cost uniquely enables the creation of a verifiable, timestamped log of events, showing every step and activity in the life of a piece of content, from creation to when it reaches the end-user. We are proud that this technology will be leveraged to provided trusted, expert resources to those most in need, amongst rising suicide rates in the US and internationally. Working with the Chopra Foundation on the Never Alone initiative gives us the perfect chance to put this rising technology at the forefront of solving pressing societal and health issues.”
Enterprise Times: what does this mean
The ambitions of the Chopra Foundation for Never Alone are ambitious. It seeks to bring together:
- innovation
- mental health and wellness
- brain and behaviour scientists
- government and policy-makers
- school and university programs
- artists
- and others.
The goal of the initiative is to address – no less – the roots of stress and suffering based around innovative scientific research. Whether the wellbeing benefits are attainable is not for Enterprise Times (ET) to judge. Where ET does have doubts is about the Chopra Foundation’s funding model. Yet, if successful, this could be a model for similar broad health initiatives.
