Samasource’s engineering team (Eric Nguyen and Alex Onsager) travelled to Haiti at the end of April to establish our first microwork center in the country. Read about the earthquake, Samasource’s investment in Haiti, and our workers’ part in an innovative emergency SMS system.

The Aftermath

The human toll of the January 12th earthquake is staggering, with over 200,000 dead. As Alex and I travelled in Haiti, our everyday interactions would often belie this tragic fact. On the surface, people were doing their best to piece together their lives. Only on occasion would the recent tragedy break through to the surface. People we were speaking with would sometimes suddenly find themselves telling us about a lost child, neighbor, or lifelong partner.

The trauma is ongoing. A huge number of people have had to abandon their homes, since even buildings that are still standing can’t be trusted. Vast encampments have sprung up in all of the city’s open spaces. In the meantime, huge numbers of people have left Port-au-Prince, seeking the relative safely of neighboring towns.

Unfortunately, the Haitian government is struggling more than ever to serve its people. Aside from the vast neighborhoods that were leveled by the earthquake, there was nearly uniform destruction of all of the government institutions in the center of town. This included the national palace, supreme court building, government ministries, and police headquarters. Almost every institution struggling to serve Haitians today was reduced to rubble.

Samasource’s Part

The resource that remains in abundance in Haiti is human spirit. It is here that Samasource is investing in Haitian recovery. Our newest digital work center is being built by our service partner in Mirebalais, 1000 Jobs/Haiti. Mirebalais is one of those towns many Haitians have fled to. This underdeveloped region is a particularly important long-term focus for Samasource, because a stronger economy here will draw more people from the overcrowded city of Port-au-Prince. By bringing digital work to this area, Samasource is creating high-value jobs where they are needed most.

Alex and I spent four days in Mirebalais, helping 1000 Jobs/Haiti plan out its physical computing infrastructure and negotiate high-speed internet access for the town. We also taught, mentoring the team leaders and conducting classes for our new workers. Their new skills will be the foundation for the expanding numbers of digital tasks that our Haitian workers will be able to handle over the years.

Throughout the training, we were constantly impressed by the workers’ motivation to work towards improving their future. Despite the unreliable internet connection, they faced their computers all day hoping to catch the trickles of network activity that would allow them to complete a few tasks at a time. It was actually a challenge at times, convincing them to pause working so we could explain new exercises.

These are people with big ambitions. Conversations during breaks were filled with talk of dreams for the future. A number of our workers asked us how they might receive a scholarship to attend school in the United States. Alex has even received a Facebook friend request from one of the workers, followed shortly after by an inquiry of how to start building a website.

Mission 4636

Our Haitian partner hit the ground running with its first, critical mission. In the aftermath of the earthquake, a coalition of non-profit organizations (Mission 4636) established a free SMS shortcode (4636) that all Haitians could use to report their emergency needs. A sophisticated human processing chain translated and categorized the torrent of incoming messages and, where possible, located them on a map of the area. The many NGOs and foreign aid services in Haiti were then able to receive targeted reports of the situation on the ground and deploy services in real-time.

Samasource workers were brought in last month to handle this large volume of human processing tasks. They are uniquely qualified to do the Haitian-Creole-to English-translation. Mission 4636 has matured into a critical piece of infrastructure in Haiti, and is now evolving to handle post-crisis needs. Reports of earthquake-related emergencies were supplanted last month with calls for aid and security-related issues. Today, the service is beginning to be integrated with Haitian government services (police, traffic services, medical emergencies) that are getting back on their feet.

Our workers in Haiti are incredibly proud to be doing what they’re doing. Not only are they developing valuable skills, they are doing work that assists people in need. We at Samasource are, in turn, incredibly proud of them.

A few days ago, we set up a conference call to evaluate potential Service Partners that we’d interviewed in the previous weeks. Each of the Screening Committee members had been assigned an applicant and at this meeting we were going to discuss our findings, do some ranking, and move on to the next step of the partnership process.

The meeting was set for Tuesday afternoon, Jan 11^th, and I was preparing for it by reviewing  copious notes from the interview that I had conducted with the applicant that I had been assigned: “1000 Jobs/Haiti”.  I was reminded again how promising a partnership with them would be.  The interview with Jacky Poteau, head of  1000 Jobs/Haiti, and his partner Bob, had painted a vivid picture for me of the opportunities for Samasource in Haiti.  The inspiration for 1000 Jobs stemmed from Bob’s initiative in 2007, where he recruited a group of women to create beautiful embroidered purses and bags. He would pay for them up front and then sell the goods in the US, thus helping the women earn an income.  What started out as a small group of women had now grown into 3 groups and around 75 women by the end of 2009. He felt that this job creation model could help Haitians and he had other ideas that he was also considering. When funding became available for a modest computer centre to help alleviate poverty for other groups of Haitians (youth and women) Bob and Jacky went searching for a partnership that would help one of these ideas along. Hence their application to Samasource as a Service Partner.

Their score on the initial screening was high due to their nonprofit status, and the fact that they would have a lab available with the requisite computers and Internet access. Further, as Haiti was just a short trip from Miami, our site visit and training costs would be reasonable. My interview painted a more intriguing picture. The demographic that they were thinking of was mainly students – youth who were interested and keen to work on computers but whom, without a project to work on, ran the risk of wasting away their potential. There was a personal connection as well – the much-loved and respected Governor General in Canada is Haitian and her two trips to her hometown were a much publicized event: photographs of her dancing in the street with the locals were a searing reminder of how being a Canadian means having a global perspective. Having recently moved to California from Canada, I was really keen on this tenuous yet visible connection. From a business perspective 1000 Jobs/Haiti was also very appealing in that the students spoke English, French and Creole and some of our Sales leads involved French.

The internal meeting on Tuesday ended with a nod for two applicants to go to the next stage of the process. 1000 Jobs/Haiti was one of them.  I fired off an email to Jacky and Bob informing them of the good news and scheduling a site visit and next steps.  Twenty minutes later, the first reports of the earthquake came through.  At first the news was sketchy and then the grim reality set in. We had not heard back from Jacky at all.  I focused on other tasks and dared not think beyond “the phones are down” and “the internet is down” as the reason for his silence. Life of course can keep you busy with mundane tasks.

Three days later, and just two hours ago as we post this, I got a call from Leila, our founder, who had heard from Jacky and he was ok.  Jacky has been sending regular email updates from Haiti, and reports that the town of Mirebalais, where the program is based, was unaffected by the quake but has received thousands of displaced people. There’s more of a case than ever for Samasource in Haiti – hopefully, Jacky’s emails are a sign of good things to come with 1000 Jobs. And we just got word that CrowdFlower, a venture-backed startup that helps companies outsource microtasks, has teamed up with Samasource, to rapidly provide paid work to Haitian participants in the program. The project will use a volunteer labor force to perform quality assurance on these tasks through an innovative iPhone application, GiveWork. Over 21,000 people have downloaded GiveWork to complete tasks in their spare time to help refugees in Kenya — now, the same application will benefit victims of the earthquake in Haiti. It’s funny how things turn out sometimes.

While U.S. firms are laying-off employees, IT outsourcing is doing well on foreign streets. The debate over offshoring has been brewing since a 2002 study by the research group Forrester predicted that 3.3 million white-collar American jobs (including 500,000 IT positions) would move overseas to countries such as India by 2015.

More than 75 percent of major financial institutions send IT work offshore, according to the consulting firm Deloitte, which estimates that offshore technology spending by banks will reach 30 percent of the industry’s $44 billion total annual IT budget by 2010. By 2012, the industry is expected to reach approximately $230 billion globally. Most jobs on the move would be back office positions that can be digitized anywhere worldwide. Plus, routine telephone inquiries are increasingly being bundled together into call centers, making for more offshore telecommunications jobs.

Business process outsourcing (BPO) remains an important part of the IT industry’s sourcing strategies, but its offshore destinations are changing. Today, Wall Street firms are sourcing from around the globe with increasing interest in African countries such as South Africa, Ghana, Egypt, and Kenya.

Click here for the Full Article

I am a very optimistic person, optimistic to the point where most think I’m a little crazy. I have tried the “In a mad world, it’s only the mad that are considered sane” approach to assuage my need to fit in with the mostly glass-half-empty lot that most of my acquaintances are, but, it doesn’t work. Then why don’t I change the way I am? Simple: because good things have happened when I was least expecting them. Like Samasource.

It’s been about a month since I’ve been doing odd bits for Samasource as a virtual assistant. Seeing the work Samasource is doing for people in countries like Kenya and Pakistan has been a source of inspiration. To want to help people that you don’t know, irrespective of religion, culture, or belief is not something many people do.

Speaking as a citizen of my country, there is huge scope and potential for an organization like Samasource. Pakistan is a strong patriarchal society with little distinction between culture and religion with women on the losing end. Though most women are denied the opportunity for education, but to be educated and unable to use that education is stifling. Samasource offers to women a way out as a balance between conforming to cultural norms and utilizing skills whether it be writing, programming or web development. It gives an opportunity for women entrepreneurs to step forward and start their own companies from their homes and find work through Samasource.

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” (Theodore Roosevelt)

When I look at the impossible task in front of Samasource and the honesty and conviction with which they are working to make it possible I understand the meaning of these words. Sometimes it’s not about winning or losing. It’s about dreaming and having the courage to try and make that dream into reality. Samasource has renewed my belief in people. It takes a whole lot of darkness to make it dark but only a small flicker of light to cut through it. That’s what Samasource means to me and other women in Pakistan; it’s our own ray of light, our way of escaping the claustrophobic environment surrounding us.

Samasource has a spiffy new design!

The new site is parked at www.samasource.com. We’ll keep what’s currently at the .org up as our blog; if you want to stay up to date on Samasource news, please become a fan on Facebook.

Last week, Samasource’s brokerage service scored our biggest contract to date– a book validation pilot project with Bookshare.org, one of the many technology-driven projects initiated at Benetech, an award-winning nonprofit based in Palo Alto and led by veteran social entrepreneur Jim Fruchterman. Bookshare provides print disabled people in the US access to over 40,000 books and periodicals via large print, digital to audio, and braille formats.

The service provider that secured this project, Daproim, is a Nairobi-based firm headed by Steve Muthee, a dynamic Kenyan entrepreneur who strives to create opportunities for young people in his hometown through socially responsible outsourcing. We’re very proud to include Daproim in our portfolio of service providers, and look forward to building lasting partnerships with more organizations like Benetech.

This trend of looking to social responsibility when choosing an outsourcing vendor is listed as the No. 1 trend in the field for 2008 by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP). The association predicts that companies providing, using or offering advice on outsourcing will increasingly develop standards that go beyond pure business objectives to address ethical questions. It expects that these standards will touch on topics that indicate how a company interacts with people, the community and the environment.

This isn’t just a feel-good move, however. Proponents say that outsourcing providers with socially responsible policies will find that corporate citizenship has business value too by lowering expenses, such as the cost of replacing burned-out employees, and provide better outcomes.

It has attracted the attention of Dariusz Sus, head of global business process outsourcing product development at Capgemini, a global outsourcing provider. He says there has been an increase in clients inquiries about his company’s compensation plans, diversity initiatives and work schedules. He says clients want to ensure that Capgemini treats employees fairly so it can attract and retain qualified workers. As time goes on, Sus believes that this trend of focusing on social responsibility will only soon hit the mainstream.

For a few people like Kifer, it already has.

Full Article written by Mary K. Pratt can be found here.

]]> http://blog.samasource.org/socially-responsible-outsourcing-listed-as-1-trend-for-2008/feed/ 1 http://blog.samasource.org/samasource-developer-featured-in-ny-times/ http://blog.samasource.org/samasource-developer-featured-in-ny-times/#comments Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:24:03 +0000 leila http://marketforchange.wordpress.com/?p=120

Wilfred Mworia, a 22 year-old employee of Samasource vendor Verviant in Nairobi, and winner of Samasource’s Facebook Developer Challenge in April, discussed Kenya’s growing technology community in a New York Times article over the weekend. The piece also covers Google’s activities in Kenya and highlights Skunkworks, a local community of software developers.

Check out the full coverage on our Ethical Outsourcing blog post.

One of Samasource’s vendors, rural outsourcing company Drishtee, was featured recently on CNN IBN (CNN’s sister organization in India). Drishtee’s model is intriguing – by linking villages across India in a distributed network, the company can tap thousands of skilled rural workers to scale client projects rapidly. If your enterprise has data entry, transcription, or text conversion needs, please write to info <at> samasource.org to find out if Drishtee would be a good fit for you.

Many thanks to Michael Wheet, filmmaker extraordinaire.