On Need to Know, we do a lot of reporting about the world’s problems. But we’re premiering a new series about people coming up with creative solutions — it’s called “Agents of Change.”
This, our first installment, deals with a thought-provoking question: in this age of globalization and ever-increasing technology, is the notion of giving charity simply outdated? We went to the Pop Tech conference – a gathering of some of the worlds leading tech and social innovators – and met a young woman who’s come up with a modern and some say controversial version of giving aid.
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.
San Francisco based Samasource is on a mission to help women, refugees and young people in developing countries earn a living wage on the Internet. The model is straightforward – Samasource works with companies that need certain types of relatively simple tasks done, like database cleanup, translations, transcriptions, etc. Samasource charges companies on a per action basis, and then pays workers in Kenya, Uganda, India, Pakistan and Haiti to do the work.
The tasks are generally more complicated than Mechanical Turk stuff, and the company pays a minimum of $1/hour to workers who were previously living on less than $3/day. Some workers, who build up to more complex tasks, make as much as $10/hour.
