SAN FRANCISCO – FEBRUARY 13, 2012 -Samasource, the leader in ethical impact sourcing, announced today that it has received the 2012 Secretary’s Innovation Award for the Empowerment of Women and Girls from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The $500,000 grant will allow Samasource to expand its operations in East Africa, connecting more women and youth to digital work. The Innovation Jury–composed of Judith Rodin of the Rockefeller Foundation, Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank, and Melanne Verveer, the Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues–found that Samasource’s proposal “truly holds the promise of transforming the lives of women and girls.”
The waste of potential is even starker in refugee camps where the educated sit idle. Donor enthusiasm for computers in Africa has created underutilized computer centers, while firms in the U.S. are already outsourcing simple computer-based tasks they need to have done. Leila Chirayath Janah saw that the Internet could connect the two to bring decent jobs to those who need them most. Samasource (“sama” means “equal” in Sanskrit) connects jobless women, youth, and refugees to dignified, computer-based work, such as data entry, converting PDFs into text files, or judging the content of images for big websites.
“WORK IS at the core of human dignity,” says Leila Chirayath Janah, founder of Samasource, a not-for-profit that connects people in developing countries with work via the Net. One example: Palo Alto-based Benetech has character-recognition text files that need to be checked against their sources. Samasource hires workers in Kenya to correct words the computer got wrong. “We’re creating platforms for meritocracy in the world.”
Read Leila Janah’s account on the empowerment of women
By Leila Janah
Why are women so undervalued compared to men?
I’ve heard many explanations, ranging from culture and religion to evolutionary biology. But none seem quite as salient as this one: women are faced with a dramatic lack of access to opportunities that allow them to use their brains, rather than their bodies, to earn income.
As literacy rates rise and more women are prepared to enter the formal labor force, fewer and fewer jobs are available to them. Oh, the deplorable irony. Even worse, those women that are employed often work for poverty-level wages, in what is called “vulnerable employment.”
To right this paradox, the development community must focus on educating women, but—more importantly—also connect them to jobs that tap these newly-formed skills.
Rainer Arnhold Program guides social entrepreneurs to scale up their work to benefit millions. Janah, a current Arnhold Fellow, collaborates with Fellows and Faculty to maximize Samasource impact and scalability.
THE PERSON
Leila Chirayath Janah is a former management consultant turned silicon valley social entrepreneur. Leila Chirayath Janah spent 10 years at Harvard and the World Bank learning about and working on solutions to poverty. She moved to San Francisco to go all-out on her big idea and to test the outer limits of caffeine consumption.
Read about Samasource in the World Technology Awards
In 2010, Samasource was selected for the World Technology Award for Social Entrepreneurship, announced on December 1st at the conclusion of the World Technology Summit in the Time & Life Building in NYC.
These Award winners and finalists are those individuals (in 20 categories) and companies/organizations (in 10 categories) who are — in the opinion of the WTN Fellows and Founding Members, through the Awards voting process — are doing the innovative work of “the greatest likely long-term significance” in their fields. They are those creating the 21st century. more >>
In 2009, Samasource received $10,000 from the Templeton Freedom Awards for Excellence in Promoting Liberty, the largest international awards program recognizing efforts to serve global freedom. Winners were selected from more than 130 applications from 47 countries.
The sixteen organizations recognized within the 2009 program represent four continents and twelve countries – Brazil, Chile, Egypt, India, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, the Republic of Georgia, Slovakia, South Africa, Sweden, and the United States. Winners were selected from more than 130 applications from 47 countries, by an independent panel of judges. The 2009 awards grant a $10,000 prize to each winner, and two prizes are given in eight categories.
