Sndbox is a global incubator project striving to integrate STEEM and other blockchain resources into creative and community initiatives.
Sndcastles and Kickstarting Community Engagement
Sndcastle Projects are a new collaborative initiative of Sndbox. We’re working with Steemit community leaders around the world to foster social, creative, and community impact. Our aim is to support and promote Steemit accelerator hubs, encouraging meetups, onboarding and local hotspots.
This is how it will work: Steemit users who want to develop an accelerator hub in their city, region, or country can work with 
Our decision to work on this initiative with both veteran and new Steemians came about due to a number of pressing questions for the Steemit platform -
1. Can we break down language barriers?
 | Cultural and language barriers alone bar us from so many of our fellow Steemians and their valuable content. Some parts of the world have failed to develop a presence on Steemit simply due to lack of whale support of their country or tongue. Sndcastles are an effort to break down those barriers and bridge parallel region-based communities. |
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2. Can we encourage healthier curation?
 | For the most part (until now) individual curators have been given delegation support or curation power. But tying curatorial responsibilities to a personal account can be dangerous, oftentimes leading to abuse and misuse. We want to make curation and community support more collaborative and trust-based. |
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3. Can we improve on the “Meetup” model?
 | In the past few months, we’ve seen regional Meetups become a mainstay in the Steemit community from NYC to Munich to Manila. After trying out several events and gaining feedback from our own Meetups, we understood that they could be much more than just social gatherings. Gatherings could be an educational resource. |
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Our mission is to address these questions by continuing to mobilize and innovate with different forms of organization and programming.
Sndcastle Goals
Our collaborative Sndcastles are structured and programmed to meet these goals -
Combine onboarding activities with education. It’s one thing to tell new people about Steemit, it’s a whole different thing to teach them how to use the platform. Much of the material, presentations, and online/offline activities will be designed to get new users quickly accustomed and comfortable with the ins and outs of Steemit.
Nurture a trust-based system. In-person activities offer a great opportunity to nurture relationships and built trust between users. These forms of bonds also help dissuade account and tag abuse as well as cultivate more active usership. For us at
Encourage more collaborative initiatives. As regional communities grow with more members and diverse accounts, we’ll be able to help them mobilize further with collaborative projects and programs.
Upvoting Guidelines
The
| ^ | Who? |
|---|---|
| +100% | Sndbox Incubator Members |
| +100% | Sndcastle Hubs |
| +50% | High-impact physical projects / initiatives (Example: STEEM Park) |
| +20% | Introduction posts promoted by Sndcastle Hubs |
| +20% | New Steemians (under the introduceyourself tag with strong content related to creative or community practices) |
We also want to make sure that abuse of the vote does not occur internally and is not used for purposes other than our core mission of impact oriented content. @Sndbox will not vote on content from personal accounts 
Our First Sndcastle Projects
This week, we have the pleasure of announcing two of our first Sndcastle Projects- 
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to form a dedicated space and ongoing in-person program for the Nigerian community in Port Harcourt. You can show your support and follow their progress here.
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We’ll be working closely with these community leaders and Sndcastle members (a few more to come soon).
The Future
We're excited to launch this new initiative! During the next few months, we’ll report back on all the metrics, development and activity. We’re open all ideas, suggestions and criticisms. Let us know your thoughts below! If we you want to read more on the topic of healthy community building, we recommend you check out the following posts -
