New Samasource Overview

Editor's Notes

• #3: Paul Parach, 24, was born in a small village in South Sudan. At the age of ten, he was forced to leave his mother and four sisters in order to escape Sudan’s escalating civil war. He fled to Kenya in 1994. After weeks of walking across the country with other young boys in a similar situation, he arrived at the Kenyan border and then at Kakuma refugee camp. At the camp, “life became harrowing … because we had no parent[s].” There, Paul was shot in the right side of his stomach by a man from a rival tribe, and moved to the ICU in Nairobi. His leg was paralyzed. “[I was left with] a disability at the age of fourteen.” But Paul kept going. The UNHCR transfered him to Dadaab's Ifo camp in 1994. At first, Paul explains, “Life seemed to grow harder every day” because he had left home without his parents and without any education. Since then, however, he has learned English and made his way to secondary school. He's among only a handful of Dinka (people from South Sudan) in Dadaab—almost all of the 280,000 people there are Somali. Two weeks ago, I met Paul in Dadaab at a computer lab run by CARE International. I was there to run an experiment: could we get refugees to use computers to do work for a San Francisco company? Paul had touched a computer for the first time only a month before. But within the first hour of our training, Paul had learned how to use email and Google. By the next day, he was teaching his classmates how to complete the work we found for him to do. Paul is in our first class of refugee remote workers in Dadaab, doing work based on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk marketplace. Earning money in this way may be his only shot at putting himself through school.
• #4: Here’s our premise. 1 billion youth will enter the job market 42 million refugees with no opportunities for advancement
• #5: In our first six months, we identified 8 core service lines that are easily repeatable, lower-risk, and generally suited for our partners. One project that we’re proud of is our work with Benetech, a nonprofit in Palo Alto digitizing 100,000 books for blind readers. Our partner in Nairobi proofreads Benetech’s OCRed text files to achieve nearly 100% accuracy. We’ve also explored unique services such as Facebook application testing and basic website creation -- another client, recent CNN hero Rising Tide Capital, decided to use Samasource to help low-income microentrepreneurs in Jersey City build inexpensive websites. Our model is a win for clients, AND a win for workers.
• #6: Samasource derives its name from the Sanskrit word sama, which means “equal”. We empower the world's untapped talent - from refugees in Kenya to women in rural Pakistan - to deliver quality internet-based services, such as data entry and basic programming. Our model consists of three steps. First, we screen and select partners who employ local people to provide services, relying on stringent social impact and quality criteria that verify our partners' technical abilities and commitment to social responsibility. All of our partners are located in the poorest regions of the world, but have access to basic computing infrastructure. Next, we provide our partners with service-specific training and prepare them to further train their own staff using live sample projects and web-based tools. Finally, we market our partners' services to paying clients through a website and sales team based in San Francisco. Samasource is a 501(c)(3) non-profit social business. Our management team and global advisory board have over forty years of experience working in technology, remote work, and social and economic development for leading institutions such as the Clinton Foundation, Kiva.org, the Ford Foundation and the World Bank. Thus far, with an investment of only $35,000 from donors and an all-volunteer staff, Samasource has found more than $160,000 in projects for 13 small businesses, nonprofit training centers, and rural data centers that provide dignified jobs to more than 500 marginalized individuals in Kenya, Uganda, Cameroon, Ghana, and Pakistan.
• #7: In our first six months, we identified 8 core service lines that are easily repeatable, lower-risk, and generally suited for our partners. One project that we’re proud of is our work with Benetech, a nonprofit in Palo Alto digitizing 100,000 books for blind readers. Our partner in Nairobi proofreads Benetech’s OCRed text files to achieve nearly 100% accuracy. We’ve also explored unique services such as Facebook application testing and basic website creation -- another client, recent CNN hero Rising Tide Capital, decided to use Samasource to help low-income microentrepreneurs in Jersey City build inexpensive websites. Our model is a win for clients, AND a win for workers.
• #8: Mention Facebook developer garages
• #9: Paul Parach, 24, was born in a small village in South Sudan. At the age of ten, he was forced to leave his mother and four sisters in order to escape Sudan’s escalating civil war. He fled to Kenya in 1994. After weeks of walking across the country with other young boys in a similar situation, he arrived at the Kenyan border and then at Kakuma refugee camp. At the camp, “life became harrowing … because we had no parent[s].” There, Paul was shot in the right side of his stomach by a man from a rival tribe, and moved to the ICU in Nairobi. His leg was paralyzed. “[I was left with] a disability at the age of fourteen.” But Paul kept going. The UNHCR transfered him to Dadaab's Ifo camp in 1994. At first, Paul explains, “Life seemed to grow harder every day” because he had left home without his parents and without any education. Since then, however, he has learned English and made his way to secondary school. He's among only a handful of Dinka (people from South Sudan) in Dadaab—almost all of the 280,000 people there are Somali. Two weeks ago, I met Paul in Dadaab at a computer lab run by CARE International. I was there to run an experiment: could we get refugees to use computers to do work for a San Francisco company? Paul had touched a computer for the first time only a month before. But within the first hour of our training, Paul had learned how to use email and Google. By the next day, he was teaching his classmates how to complete the work we found for him to do. Paul is in our first class of refugee remote workers in Dadaab, doing work based on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk marketplace. Earning money in this way may be his only shot at putting himself through school.
• #10: In our first six months, we identified 8 core service lines that are easily repeatable, lower-risk, and generally suited for our partners. One project that we’re proud of is our work with Benetech, a nonprofit in Palo Alto digitizing 100,000 books for blind readers. Our partner in Nairobi proofreads Benetech’s OCRed text files to achieve nearly 100% accuracy. We’ve also explored unique services such as Facebook application testing and basic website creation -- another client, recent CNN hero Rising Tide Capital, decided to use Samasource to help low-income microentrepreneurs in Jersey City build inexpensive websites. Our model is a win for clients, AND a win for workers.
• #11: In our first six months, we identified 8 core service lines that are easily repeatable, lower-risk, and generally suited for our partners. One project that we’re proud of is our work with Benetech, a nonprofit in Palo Alto digitizing 100,000 books for blind readers. Our partner in Nairobi proofreads Benetech’s OCRed text files to achieve nearly 100% accuracy. We’ve also explored unique services such as Facebook application testing and basic website creation -- another client, recent CNN hero Rising Tide Capital, decided to use Samasource to help low-income microentrepreneurs in Jersey City build inexpensive websites. Our model is a win for clients, AND a win for workers.