As you are all aware, we have been going through some changes as a team lately. One of the changes we have decided on was going to a monthly newsletter rather than a bi-weekly one. This allows us to focus more on development and less on scrambling to cram news in for the newsletter. This will lead to higher productivity as well as better newsletters overtime.

This is the first newsletter of the new series so I hope you guys enjoy. Aside from the newsletter changes we have also been restructuring our team internally. This has led to the implementation of new communication policies that will help us meet deadlines and communicate more openly. As you guys know we reduced the size of our team to cut cost but to take up part of the slack we invited some old time community members to join the conversation.

We are doing this with hopes to inspire more creativity and innovation from our team, and so far it appears to be working! We have some fresh ideas in the works that I’m sure y’all will really love. We look forward to this new direction that we are going in and can’t wait to share our progress as we grow together. 

But you have to remember, we can’t do it alone, and we need your help to grow. Stay vigilant, stay inspired, keep building the world you want to live in.

Christopher Franko
Founder

The EXPEX development team, led by Asim Ashfaq, has achieved a lot for the EXPEX project. The team has been heavily immersed in the process and is now moving deeper into development.

They already finished the Creation of the EXPEX Smart Contract which will be holding ERC-20 Token pairs, order book and allow for trade and all The UI updates on Luna Wallet as well as adding EXPEX exchange UI within Luna Wallet. 

Currently the team is working on making the EXPEX UI dynamic by adding some additional tweaks on the front end side of the code and setting up things for interaction with contract (Also considering setting up a local db for Luna wallet to store orders and transaction data). 

In the next few days they will be deploying the WEXP and EXPEX smart contract on expanse network for QA within this week.  Also in the following weeks the milestone is to achieve Phase 1 development features which include basic pair listing, order listings and trade.

This week I (Omar) had the opportunity to travel to a re-located area of the armed conflict in Guatemala, my job was to be a translator for the US doctors who provide services in the community.

From the city, it was a 10-hour bus trip followed by crossing the lake to stay at the shore of Lake Izabal then be ready for a week of challenges.

Currently this region in the country is in a State of Siege which means that there are no guarantees for those who visit, there can be no groups of more than 5 people and there is a danger of being captured without excuse by the police.

Despite this, I decided to serve my community with the support of Expanse, approximately 550 people were served in 5 different villages.

Every day for five days we travel to remote communities and give medical assistance. Children and women are mainly cared for; husbands are working all day.

The team consisted of five translators, five doctors, an emergency doctor, and a pharmacy with medicines for preventive care. Dr. Alan Barber, the forerunner of this organization, took charge of visits to homes of people who could not come to us due to the state of their health.

We went through five different communities, sometimes by water, sometimes by pickup and sometimes by walking great distances. In numbers:

• We were a team of 12 people, each donating their time, doctors who came from the United States, local interpreters (Kekchi – Spanish, Spanish – English) and others helping.
• All travel and transportation expenses are paid by True North Missions.
• I traveled 680 km by bus and walked a total of 44 km in a week. 
• We attended to approximately 500 children and adults in 5 days, from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm.
• The clinic and pharmacy were set up at the community school.
• The main problems were skin (mange and fungus), dehydration, dental problems and parasites.
• There are no dental or extremely serious services, so these patients are referred to the health center. They usually do not go.
• Each person was given a dewormer, toothbrush and vitamins for 30 days to the children; besides the treatment of the problem they had.
• This mission is carried out two or three times a year in the most remote communities. All others have access to the health center.

It was an amazing trip, healing the soul of a lot of people but mostly mine. Thanks Expanse for your support. 

Omar Alvarez
Creative Director