Decemeber 14, 2011 FORBES MAGAZINE By Kerry A. Dolan
San Francisco nonprofit Samasource just got a seal of approval for its efforts from tech giant Google. Google.org is making a $1.5 million grant to Samasource, an innovative San Francisco tech company that serves as a link between large U.S. technology companies and poor people in the developing world looking for work. These large tech companies outsource small piecework that Samasource calls ‘microwork’ to poor people across the developed world.
On Friday, I wrote about two social enterprises ― Samasource and Digital Divide Data ― that extend computer-based employment to people with modest educations in developing countries. The strategy of harnessing the Internet to bring low-cost data management jobs to remote and impoverished communities has been called “impact sourcing.” Some estimate that the market for these services, $4.5 billion today, could rise to $20 billion by 2015, providing jobs to 780,000 people (pdf, p.14).
A number of readers thought the idea had great potential to alleviate poverty in the developing world. David Griesing, from Philadelphia, (29) saw it as a way to allow more people to “work with dignity” while improving their productive capacity. Patrick McNamara, from the Boston Area, Mass. (46), noted that it could be a way to increase global security, as well ― since “poverty and income inequalities … can lead to violence [and] have a negative impact on our economy and our own ‘homeland security.’” Tim Bal, from Belle Mead, N.J. (1), described impact sourcing as “a great innovation” that “would raise millions of the world’s poor out of poverty.” But he noted that it presents a problem: “It reduces the job demand in developed countries like the United States.”
November 3, 2011 – THE NEW YORK TIMES, By David Bornstein
More than 60 percent of the world’s gross domestic product comes from global trade. This is double what it was in the 1980s. Most economists agree that the astonishing increase in trade over the past quarter century has boosted economic growth and job creation, and, in many countries, led to a decline in absolute poverty. But while the economic superhighway has spread around the globe, in many parts of the world there are still not enough on-ramps.
OCTOBER 25, 2011 – HUFFINGTON POST. BY Leila Janah
It’s true: women and girls are hot. Double-Xers are finally making it to the top of the development agenda following the publication of Sheryl WuDunn and Nick Kristof’s book Half the Sky (now a global movement), Sheryl Sandberg’s iconic TED talk on women at work, and the genius of The Girl Effect animated PSAs.
But most of the focus is on education for the “girl-child” (can’t we just call them girls?) and not on the underlying problem: women have little perceived economic value in most parts of the world.
That’s why they are selectively aborted — so much so that 120 men are born for every 100 women in China — and denied proper nutrition and health care in poor families across South Asia. Women in India are fifty percent more likely than boys to perish before they reach the age of five. Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics, summed up these combined horrors in a famous piece in 1990 titled simply “More than 100 Million Women are Missing.”
This summer, you heard their speeches in our Big Omaha Video Series. Now, in partnership with our photography and moving images partner Malone & Company, we’re giving you exclusive access to backstage interviews with the entrepreneurs and innovators who presented at our Big Omaha event in May.
For one week only, the Big Omaha Backstage Pass will feature 10 of our Big Omaha speakers in 15 previously unreleased video interviews. We hope these interviews, with topics ranging from the importance of mentoring to the quest to change the world, will engage, encourage, enlighten and excite you to follow your passion, a message at the core of Big Omaha.
The Trailblazers for Good Q&A Series sits down with the most world shaking individuals leading the movement to align impact, profit and purpose. Here we pick the brains of top social entrepreneurs to learn first hand from their stunning accomplishments, utter failures, and stiff challenges in leading the revolution of doing well by doing good. Join us as we explore the collective consciousness that drives and inspires these individuals.
Leila Chirayath Janah is the founder of Samasource, an award-winning social business that connects people living in poverty to microwork — small, computer-based tasks that build skills and generate life-changing income.
This video features Leila Janah, founder and CEO of Samasource, a nonprofit connecting people living in poverty to work via the internet.
In her talk, Leila shared her vision and inspiration for starting Samasource and told stories from the field about the impact of her amazing work. One of my favorite lines from her talk reminds us of the power of the age we’re living in to not only affect change in our own backyard, but around the world:
“The internet reduces the friction of collaboration across all of these centers and time zones, and with a highly distributed workforce.”
