Dorothea Wenzel

ardkon

ardkon is a digital ecosystem for grassroots initiatives & a democratized fundraising platform that accelerates civic engagement & participation. In crises and changes, less formalized institutions are deprived of their abilities to participate in the civic sector development. Crowd support streams are easier to access by official institutions in contrast to grassroots initiatives, since they still lack resources of transparency, visibility and support to gain credibility for their actions. Our mission: turning public demands into innovative assets… Initiated as a social entrepreneurship movement in Lebanon in late 2019, then ard, supported the civil society and launched a series of events. Initiatives developed solutions for social challenges and governance through entrepreneurship activism. On Aug 4, 2020 in an urgent response to the Beirut blast, ard·kon started to develop an independent crowd-support platform. The platform enhances the engagement and trust between the international community and less institutionalized relief initiatives. We provide a technological eco system and fundraising models to increase the opportunities of grassroots participation for an accelerated recovery. Our services aim to support grassroots initiatives anywhere in the world, as they grow to become the branches of society, economy and environment; locally and globally. We believe in the responsibility for grassroots actions to be transparent, visible and supported, which therefore became the core pillars of ardkon's work and advocacy.