PROPOSAL NAME:
Ape Houses
TEAM DESCRIPTION:
- Ctballer (@ctballer_) – David: Founder of Enabling the Disabled, a non-profit in Ghana that provides aid to neurodivergent children and mothers. Boots on the ground, organizer, the man with the plan. Our organization has a full-time staff to assist with operation, accounting, medical outreach as well as dozens of local volunteers. BA in Business Administration from Ashesi University, LLB in Law from Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration.
- @nftgerry - Gerry: Co-Founder of Ape Solar, MBA 00517-03155.
@dejen - Co-Founder of Ape Solar, MBA 00517-03155. - NFTonyP ( @NFTonyP) – Chef Tony: Founder of TGID & Co-author of A Day of Ink, a By Autistic medical outreach event with the Doodles Inkubator. Background in Public Policy, Digital Marketing, and Sales. Assists with grant writing, project management, and communications. BA in Criminal Justice from Texas State University…
PROPOSAL DESCRIPTION:
Ape Houses aims to be the flagship in-house philanthropy initiative for the Ape Coin DAO in Africa and to develop the Ape Chain’s philanthropic identity for social good efforts all across the globe one day. Our plan is to build 5 solar powered Ape Houses Bakeries which will produce Moca Bread, 1 Ape School multipurpose educational center and commence the Apes Come Home project, Apecoin Dao’s first ever yearly social impact volunteer program in Africa.
Through our previous work with the BAYC, Squiggles, Doodles, Pudgy Penguin, and Mutant Cartel communities we have done smaller scale bakery builds, hosted workshops to teach mothers with neurodivergent children how to bake, and provided small business grants to get their operations up and running https://x.com/ctballer_/status/1694129119582097482. In doing so, there has arisen a high demand for baked goods in the Cape Coast area market. We want to capitalize on the emerging market we created that has shown good momentum. Due to the lack of bakery infrastructure and the high cost barrier to build them local mothers have not been able to scale this opportunity. This caused the grants we gave out to not be as impactful as we wished. Without enough places to bake, there is a limit to how many mothers can apply the skills we teach them to create economic opportunity. Having run the first Ape House bakery for over a month, we have seen the production of 200 loaves of bread sold in less than 3 hours each day.
Building more Ape Houses fills the production gap by increasing the number of bakeries the number of mothers of special needs children that can operate in Cape Coast. This will empower these mothers with everything they need to apply their baking skills and facilitate a profitable business model to directly benefit the struggling neurodivergent population in Ghana. This will be the first of its kind, as even on a governmental level, such an initiative has never been undertaken for the neurodivergent population. We are asking for funding to enable these special mothers the necessary income to take care of their families and in the future, build and run their own Ape Houses.
A portion of the revenue generated from sales of Moca Bread will used for several things. Firstly, reinvested to purchase more land and build more Ape Houses(bakeries), cementing the project’s sustainability and scalability. Also, to organize hackathons to onboard local students onto Apechain through Ape schools which we will discuss below, organize events like free neurodivergence medical screenings and educational sessions, educational scholarships and more. Our Ape Houses Model is tried,tested, and sustainable; we are needing this capital injection to seriously get it off the ground and scale.
The second bit of this proposal is the building of Ape School. Ape School is designed to be a multi-functional educational hub, empowering mothers and neurodivergent children while creating a bridge for young African talent to engage with ApeChain and Web3 technology. As part of the Ape Houses project, Ape School will offer specialized training to equip mothers with sustainable vocational skills like sewing, baking, and other crafts. Additionally, the center will host sessions with medical and educational professionals, ensuring both mothers and children receive support for integration into society and improved quality of life.
Ape School will also serve as a dynamic launchpad for ApeChain hackathons and blockchain workshops, leveraging Africa’s rich base of developers, builders, and students eager to learn and innovate. By organizing transportation from surrounding schools, Ape School will draw in local students, to enable them to actively participate in hackathons and onboarding efforts. With funding from the bakeries, Ape School can host multiple hackathons and onboarding events throughout the year, establishing it as a vibrant node of Ape Chain proliferation.
This initiative taps into the vast potential of African talent and brings significant value to the Ape ecosystem. Through Ape School, the ApeCoin DAO can cultivate a new wave of builders, expanding the reach of ApeChain, and positioning ApeCoin as a transformative force for social and economic empowerment across underserved regions.
The final piece of our vision is Apes Come Home—an immersive, community-driven philanthropy mission uniting the Apes, Mocaverse and web3 communities at large. This initiative invites volunteers from around the world to experience Africa authentically, engaging with local culture and participating hands-on in our projects.
During their stay, volunteers will be fully integrated into our operations, learning to bake and distribute Moca bread in our Ape House bakeries while connecting with local families. Ape School and Ape Houses will serve as anchor facilities for these global contributors, offering spaces for skill-sharing sessions, educational outreach, and direct interactions between with the community in Cape Coast.
Through Apes Come Home, we fulfill the community’s desire for meaningful, in-person contributions. Volunteers can donate their time and expertise, working with and mentoring children, teaching valuable skills, and helping distribute essential goods. These facilities will also house and distribute physical donations such as clothing, toys, and books, making Ape Houses a centralized hub for community support and tangible impact.
When the Apes Come Home program is fully fleshed out and ready to accept applications, we will use a call to action on socials to point to a sign up form for the initiative. We will review applications and directly contact applicants via Twitter/discord to further facilitate their onboarding to the trip. We will publicly share the cohort of visitors on social media when finalized but will be doing admin work by communicating with individuals and group info sessions to ensure participants are aligned with how the program will work and make sure they are sufficiently prepared.
BENEFIT TO APECOIN ECOSYSTEM:
We will be producing TONS OF HIGH QUALITY CONTENT YEAR ROUND – social media will be brought along the journey of our impact bringing thousands of people in African underserved communities for our ape social impact activations on these sites.
We want to promote social responsibility in the Ape and Mocaverse ecosystems by building Ape House bakeries to run a self sustainable and scalable business and Ape School to teach skills and onboard students into our community.
There have been troves of Ape and Moca community members, honestly there are so many of our friends and connections we have made throughout our time in the web3 space that have a desire to get their hands dirty and directly get involved in our philanthropic efforts with our organization. Ape Houses, Moca Bread, Ape School, and Apes come home is the infrastructure and programming where people from all hemispheres and home countries can come to Africa and directly get involved with charitable work. We are humbled by the opportunity to build out the DAOs’ and Ape Chain’s philanthropic roadmap for years to come.
To further illustrate the participants Apes Come Home who actually come visit Ghana will be in fantastic hands here’s a little alpha. David’s family own various lodging properties in the region so the Ape and Moca community will be able to access being guided by a local and affordable high quality hospitality. Part of this initiative is to allow volunteers a once in a lifetime opportunity to explore all over Ghana during their stay and introduce them to the diversity and beauty of an African country.
Ape Solar Goes Global
We saw a fantastic opportunity since we will be constructing infrastructure that will need electricity to collaborate with one our of favorite MBA initiatives to date, Ape Solar. While Ape Houses’ primary focus is social good, we thought it would be amazing to make our facilities run on clean renewable energy. We are super excited to be a part of Ape Solar’s first foray across the globe to help enhance our facilities to be eco-friendly with our energy consumption.
Context of the Humanitarian Crisis we are working to combat:
In rural parts of Ghana neurodivergence is thought by society to be brought on by a curse. What that means in effect is that when a child is born with Autism and the father finds out, to avoid being afflicted by the curse he will abandon the child and mother to fend for themselves. The mothers in most cases become excommunicated by society, are not offered opportunities for education or employment, and in some cases are led to abandon their children due to the inability to take care of themselves and their children. This is a perfect visual from a docuseries we shot in 2022.
The reality of how deeply ingrained curses and neurodivergence are in the culture is an inextricable link and it is seriously an epidemic. It really does break your heart to put yourself in the shoes of a mother who has to make these mortifying decisions as well as the children who had no say how they were going to be born or where they were born or having to worry about whether their society will accept them and provide them with the appropriate schooling, support, education, therapy, and supervision that neurodivergent people require.
Participating and funding Ape Houses will allow the DAO to get directly involved in some seriously amazing work by our selfless founder David and his team.
David has been a force of good having already helped thousands of neurodivergent children and families in Ghana and Ape Houses is a step in the right direction to eventually turn to tens of thousands of lives changed, to hundreds of thousands, and eventually millions throughout the African continent and the world one day.
Since 2018 David has made it his life’s mission to help work against institutionalized mistreatment of children with neurodivergence and their families. He has focused his efforts in Ghana as that is where he is based but there are many other countries in the African continent that perceive neurodivergence as an inescapable curse.
To illustrate the fitness and capability to execute on the Ape Houses mission, here are a few examples of Byautistic’s efforts collaborating with Web3 communities to provide lifesaving assistance to those in need.
Our Past Work:
- Neurodiversity Screenings: Organized free medical screenings for over 150 underprivileged children, using art to bring awareness and care, in collaboration with Doodles IP.
- Safe Shelters: Built shelters for children abandoned due to their neurodivergence, offering them a safe space to thrive using ape IP and pudgy penguin plushies donated by the Pudgy Penguins team .
- Support for Single Mothers: Empowered single mothers—often left by partners unwilling to support their children—through entrepreneurship workshops. Several success stories have already emerged, all using ape IP.
- Access to Clean Water: Partnered with Novel labs (Mutant Cartel) to establish water sources in underserved communities , improving health and living conditions, using our impact as an opportunity to educate on neurodivergence.We also partnered with the Pudgy Penguins team to donate plushies to the children of the village.
- Docuseries on Autism in Africa: Produced a docuseries highlighting autism and neurodivergence in Africa, shining a light on local challenges and triumphs, all while using ape IP.
- Educational Impact: Renovated and built schools that embrace children with special needs, creating environments where they can learn and grow, using ape IP.
- Web3 Onboarding: Successfully onboarded over 200 African students into the Web3 space since 2022, opening doors to new opportunities and creating financial equality.
- Project Food For All: A program where our yearly goal is feeding 1000 underprivileged people while using ape IP in marketing efforts.
As the BAYC community as previously worked with the Jane Goodall Foundation and Education and Arts in Miami, Byautistic is a home-grown humanitarian organization that is looking to associate with the DAO to develop their philanthropic mission and enable community members be a part of it through life changing experiences.
Philanthropy: Ape houses will be providing a direct connection between saving the lives of children who are excommunicated from their families and exiled for being born a way they have no control over. At Enabling the Disabled part of our efforts are to provide awareness to the realities faced when you or your child is born with a neurodivergent condition like Autism in rural Ghana, and Africa at large. In these efforts we will be massively pushing the support of the Ape Chain, Ape Coin DAO, and BAYC/Moca brands because they are financially assisting us to turn around the living conditions for human beings who deal with condemnation and adversity unlike some people who can wrap their heads around. We will help define Ape Chain’s/The DAOs brand identity to include social good and service as important to its mission.
DEFINITIONS:
Neurodivergence: when the brain processes information differently, some conditions include Autism Spectrum Disorder, Dyslexia, and Tourette Syndrome.
Ape House: a bakery - a traditional oven factory that is used to bake Moca bread. The primary product is called Moca Bread.
Ape School: a multipurpose center that can accept donations of physical goods, host workshops, and operate as a local logistics hub for Enabling the Disabled’s charitable work.
Apes Come Home: a community-led mission to directly contribute to Ape House operations and gain a more diverse worldview exploring the country of Ghana.
STEPS TO IMPLEMENT:
Project start date: Upon completion of the proposal
Example date: Jan 15th
- Make land purchase, contract architect to create building plans/blueprints for Ape School Multipurpose Center, and hire a construction team that will execute on those plans.
- Associated cost: $45k
- Time: 2 weeks
- Have construction team build 5 Ape House Bakeries and 1 Ape School Center. This is where building materials come in to play. The construction contractors will procure materials locally so our team is not burdened with transportation ourselves.
- Associated cost: $105k
- Time: 2 months
- Furnish the center, provide electricity via Ape Solar Panels, and inaugurate the new infrastructure in Cape Coast. We will make any final payments to contractors during this tranche.
- Associated cost: $100k
- Time: 1 month
- Videographer and Photography post-production edits to share content cataloging the construction project and the impact on the surrounding community. We will already have the funds to pay content team from third tranche as we will be paying them incrementally throughout the project.
- Time: 3 weeks
- Set up itinerary for Apes Come Home, put out a call to action, and schedule the first Ape Coin DAO mission trip to West Africa.
- Time: 1 month
Project end date: 5 months after start date
- ongoing attention will be put towards Apes Come Home mission trip logistics
Example end date: June 15th
Ghana Property Laws and Policies
- Per our land laws, lands that belong to stools remain with the stools. Stools lands are related to chieftaincy of a particular families, meaning in some areas they are owned by chiefs and in other areas they are owned by families. To purchase such land, there ought to be a meeting with a witness, drinks given as a token before the consideration, then documentation. Sometimes, documentation can start when the contract is finalized orally. Due to the nature of the areas we hope to serve, these lands will mostly be stool lands. We are in talks with multiple chiefs and family heads, as word has gotten around town about our generosity and idea in the building of the first ape house bakery. We have met with some and have had several calls, and we have over 10 areas to select from. We are selecting based on viability of the business in the area, and proximity to mothers of special needs children.
Requests for Foundation
- When it comes to the Foundation’s involvement, we could use a helping hand when it comes to the Apes Come Home portion. We will craft an application, review submissions, and host info sessions. If the Foundation/Council could provide support via social media shares of our call to action and some assistance behind the scenes to button up the cohort selection that would be helpful.
REPORTING EXPECTATIONS:
Throughout the construction of Ape Houses and Ape School we will have videographers onsite to document the progress so we can share it all over socials for people all over the world to come along for the ride.
From a content distribution perspective, we will promote our work with Ape Houses and Ape School across various media channels. We will be posting internet native content on our socials. In Africa we will be coordinating with CNN African Heroes in order to distribute our video content on local cable television networks. The aim is for the connection with CNN to snowball to international coverage on their sister networks and have our work for the DAO and the natives of Ghana seen across the globe.
We will provide annual reports of the bread production statistics to help quantify the scale of the market and how it’s growth sustains with the presence of adequate infrastructure to meet the growing demand.
We plan to regularly provide updates and testimonials on socials as part of our content creation budget allocation and commitment to shaping the DAOs social impact identity.
We will provide updates on X as our main platform for information and to distribute reporting. We are open to any specific requests on behalf of the council if they want to implement any sort of standardized reporting on a Notion site or other platform besides socials for archival purposes.
Our plan is to provide annual reporting on a recurring basis as Ape Houses operations continues to scale over time. We will keep the DAO and community updated on stories, growth, stats, and impact.
OVERALL COST:
Total amount requested from the ApeCoin Ecosystem Fund = $250,000
Budget Estimates
- Land Purchase & Development: $30,000
- Pre-construction costs (design, legal fees, permits): $15,000
- Building Materials: $70,000
- Labor: $35,000
- Furnishings & Equipment: $60,000
- Solar: $20,000
- Marketing/ Content Creation: $10,000
- Contingency (4%): $10,000
Our primary goal with this proposal is to maximize our impact within the fiscal confines of smaller sized budget threshold of $250k that the dao offers for proposals. Obviously we would love to build 20 bakeries as that would amplify the impact 4 fold but we are confident that with 5 bakeries the operation should net sufficient revenue to help us scale without asking the Dao for $1m.
We originally had the budget for the bakeries + multipurpose center come in at $230k including the contingency which fit comfortably below the top threshold. Prior to the submission for public feedback we had a meeting with the Ape Solar team and felt a lot of synergy to collaborate. Upon our talks with NFT Gerry we were able to squeeze this collab for $20k worth of solar in to the $250k bucket by the skin of our teeth.
Not only is this collab badass because it implements and sources from a successful AIP sponsored business but it also helps make Apes Houses more eco-friendly. We are all for implementing renewable energy and for bringing business to a fellow Ape builder.
Funding Tranches
- Tranche 1: $45k (land + dev): Upon successful AIP passing
- Tranche 1:$105k (building): 2 weeks later
- Tranche 3:$100k (furnishing) 2 months later
