We are well into our Summer Associate program at Samasource.  We have four full-time Associates spread across Haiti, India, and Kenya and five more Associates in our San Francisco office – Samasource’s largest Associate class ever.  Our roles vary as much as our experience.  We tackle marketing, fundraising, quality, client management, and engineering, and plenty of other side projects.

As a Senior Associate in San Francisco, my main goal is to evaluate and revamp the training process for our workers located all over the world.  The potential scale of the project (codename: SamaSchool) can be intimidating; I’ve found it can be sometimes an extremely complex and other times a simple problem.  Large companies can spend many years and millions of dollars to develop an effective training system, and yet perhaps every small business which has ever employed more than a few people has had to decide how to train its new employees.  More than once I’ve agonized over making a key decision, only to learn later that much larger, more resourced companies have made similar decisions in their early days with just as limited information.

An important consideration in designing our training is our audience.  Some Samasource workers have never previously typed on a computer, used the internet, or heard of a spreadsheet.  And yet we sometimes train these same people within a few weeks to be able to process volumes of complex, sensitive digitized information.  Perhaps because our primary objective is to help ease poverty in the communities where our workers live, a misconception is that a non-profit organization like ours would provide only simple kinds of work.  However, Samasource’s ultimate goal is to use for-profit business principles to deliver valuable services to our clients even when that client might not necessarily understand our mission.  Our workers’ jobs have real value in the marketplace and the work can be far from easy.  Muhammad Yunus describes this vision of a social business:

Perhaps for some consumers, the social benefits created by the social business will be an additional reason to buy from it — just as some consumers today prefer to patronize companies with a reputation for being worker-friendly, environmentally conscious, or socially responsible. But for the most part, social businesses will compete with PMBs [profit-maximizing businesses] on the same terms as we see in traditional capitalist competition — and may the best company win.

When a leading technology company asks Samasource to process millions of pieces of information in order to ensure the continued relevance of its most important product, would it let us deliver a lower level of quality as a kind of “social donation”?  As a former liberal arts major I feel it would be hugely generous if they did, but as a current MBA student, I also know this is just as hugely unlikely to happen.  Samasource is striving to win and be what Yunus refers to as “the best company,” so we can continue to bring more jobs to our workers who need them.

Finally, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, each Summer Associate has many projects, and I have the fun responsibility of coordinating several short Samasource documentaries. We have two different film production companies coming into the office to meet our staff and also visit the field.  The early footage looks extremely promising, and we plan to share the finished videos soon.  Next in our blog:  more updates from our Associates!

Interviewing Chelsea at nearby Dolores Park

Interviewing Leila in the office

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.

A typical day of work in Nairobi for me starts with the commute to work using a matatu (usually a minivan/minbus). The roads are pretty bumpy and the traffic jam is quite heavy, no one can predict when the bus will reach its destination. By the time I make it to the office (a shared space kindly donated by one of Samasource’s service providers) most people are already at work.

While the official business language in Kenya is English, a good thing for foreigners like me, most Kenyans are trilingual (they fluently speak their tribal language, Swahili and English). The dress code is rather strict and most people doing business in Kenya wear a suit.

The aspect of time takes getting used to especially when scheduling an appointment in Kenya where it is common work on Swahili time. On needs to program this extra time to the initial appointment and be very patient for your contact to show up. Personally, I did not experience this problem during my work, because I am not a local. In fact, Samasource partners were kind enough to adapt to US culture and were always timely. But I had to deal with African customs when scheduling personal appointments and learned to be very flexible about time.

The mornings usually go by very quickly and tea is served frequently. A habit that I think was introduced by the British and carried on by the Indians and now a staple of work life for the Africans. Most of Kenyan workers that I met are welcoming and relaxed people, I feel very secure and comfortable when visiting Samasource Service partners. They usually have a positive opinion of Westerners and are mostly kind and respectful. The lunch break is around one o’clock and that’s when most of the team indulges in chicken curry with chapattis (large tortillas) at the local restaurant.

Visiting the Partner sites can sometimes be challenging in that there are no bus maps to indicate locations or times. Sometimes the partners are kind enough to pick me up. Others do their best to send me as much information as they can to help me locate their store or office.

The workforce at the Service Partners comprises roughly of equal amounts of men and women. I found the Kenyan women to be very hardworking and ambitious: They are usually multitasking, switching from their job to family matters and home activities with ease. They are astute entrepreneurs, and many are in highly regarded positions are handled by women. Adept Technologies is a good example of a Samasource partner founded by highly efficient women entrepreneurs. Indeed, both the CEO and the president of the company are women: Diana and Mercy. They have an excellent background and have “joined forces” to create Adept Technologies, a small but stable company employing 15 people.

Since my initial task to create the worker’s profiles for the Samasource website is now complete, I am now assisting with the greeting cards project. In this endeavor I am training Samasource workers to create greeting cards www.samasource.org/gifts The greeting cards include beautifulful pictures from Kenya as well as greetings in English and Swahili. This project will allow our partners to earn an income while giving them the ability to work in a new and creative way: Make sure you participate in their efforts and enjoy one of these cards yourself!

See Leila speak about the challenges of using microwork to help people in Africa make their own livelihoods online. Dignified digital jobs for the next billion.

“The African Social Enterprise Forum–Saturday September 26,2009 at the Desmond Tutu Center, NYC –will have at least US$4 billion social investment capital represented as well as senior executives from leading social entrepreneurship organizations such as Acumen Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation, Endeavor, Ashoka and Social Private Equity South Africa.

The forum will respond to the question raised on Social Edge – Are the Only Innovations in Social Entrepreneurship Anglo-Saxon?, by highlighting Africa’s most innovative, world class social entrepreneurial solutions. Please visit www.asef2009.weebly.com to register.”

Come to the African Social Enterprise Forum in NYC September 26th, 2009

What is a “reasonable price” for a NFP to pay for a software or service? Should they pay market rate as if they were a profit making venture? Should they get a discount? Of should businesses, especially lower marginal cost businesses like software companies make a habit of donating licenses to not for profits?

A hard working not-for-profit (NFP) has something in common with a successful for-profit company – they both aggressively look at every item of the budget to make sure they stay in the black. Of course, after that things diverge. Regular companies invest in tools to increase the bottom line and NFPs seeks to save as much of their capital as possible so they have enough left for the expenses that directly impact the community they are trying to serve.

One of the things I do to attack the bottom line is to politely ask the companies whose software products we use if they would be willing to donate a license to, or at least offer a discount on a license to Samasource. Some of these products are really expensive and some of them are really reasonably priced. But what does “reasonably priced” mean to a NFP? You see we think about things slightly differently. For me $20 is a wire transfer of payment to Cameroon or a sliver of a training program for 10 new potential Samasource workers trying to make a dignified digital living.

Of course, that’s what I care about. Other companies have different priorities. I get it. It’s just that when you ask everyone whose products you use you get a wide variety of responses. Some people are really coo, like Dropbox (http://www.getdropbox.com). They have a file syncing program that works through a web app and desktop clients for Windows and Mac. The free version is 2 GB and that was fine till we started making a video ad for Hulu (also donated, thanks Hulu.com!). I wrote, they got right back to me and bumped us to 10 GB of shared storage.

Some of the other tools we use we were able to purchase at a large discount thanks to Techsoup. Their NFP version of Adobe Creative Suite was something we could justify as it is a great tool for illustrating the stories of our service partners on the website and in print materials. Also it was a LARGE discount on a very expensive piece of software. Thanks Techsoup and Adobe! It would have been better if it was free. Did I mention we don’t use this tool to make a profit but rather to help people who live in extreme poverty work their way to a livelihood?

Of course some people say no. That’s cool, they have other things going on, maybe they don’t care about our mission or don’t even have a charitable giving program. Not every for profit business has the time, the budget, the desire or the motivation to donate. More power to them and I hope they rock their bottom line.

And then there are just jerks. A great example is 37 Signals. They make money building amazing tools for other people to make money with – project management, CRM, and other software products largely used by businesses. And what did they say when I asked if they had a donation or discount program?

“We… believe everyone is entitled to the best price we can offer, from the small businessperson who’s barely squeaking by to the non-profit to the big corporation. That’s why the published prices are the only prices we offer.”

Wow. I respect a good honest no, but to suggest that the reason they don’t offer a NFP discount is that they sell Basecamp, et al for best price they can offer to anyone, anywhere and anytime? I have no knowledge of their marginal costs or balance sheets, I am just going out on a limb to suggest that they just don’t want to donate. I would even respect a “No, and you are a big bozo for even asking.” I get that sometimes. Maybe I am a bozo. I thought it doesn’t hurt to ask.

But it does hurt. The Grand Prize Winner in full on jerk responses to a polite request for a donated license has to be Panic. I’ve used Transmit for years but if anyone wants a license, mine is for sale. I asked very nicely if they would be so kind as to donate or offer a discount on their amazing program Coda so that Samasource has a time saving tool to update our website. And what was the response?

“Thanks for writing. We don’t have special pricing for educational users or non-profit organizations, unfortunately. We tried to price Coda reasonably for all users, and we hope you will be able to purchase it in the future, because we’d love to have you as a user!”

You know what is unfortunate? That you can’t just say no, you have to simultaneously suggest we are just too cheap to pay you for your amazing software and then, on top of that, you try to SELL us in the the same sentence. Is this a real response to a request for a donation – “No, we won’t give this to your organization but you can buy it.” I’m not buying it, if you know what I mean.

What is “reasonably priced” to a NFP? Coda costs 5 wire transfers to any of the 49 poorest countries in the world. Money we would much rather spend getting wages to the workers we support. Panic doesn’t need to care about these people or about us. I just request they fail to care in a way that is polite and honest.

Our amazing mentors have told us again and again you have to ask. And we will continue to do so. Feel free to say no. But I’d appreciate it if you said yes.

July 15, 2009 (San Francisco, CA) — My internship began in early June as I boarded a plane for Kenya with Leila Chirayath Janah, Samasource’s CEO and Founder.

What I experienced on this two-week trip was life changing. I have previously traveled to developing countries and witnessed phenomenal economic growth juxtaposed with abject poverty, but I was not prepared for Kenya.

Nairobi, a city of contradictions

Nairobi, the nation’s capital, is a bustling city with many apparent contradictions — wealth and poverty, Muslims and Christians, nature and pollution, advanced and antiquated. Yet those descriptors do little justice. After all, how can I adequately summarize a city that is home to high rise office buildings, a week day market filled with goods from Maasai tribeswomen, a sophisticated cultural museum with the world’s oldest human fossils, a rotting cattle carcass next to a main thorough fare, trustworthy cab drivers and questionable hoteliers? The city streets were filled with vehicle exhaust, a healthy fear of carjacking, entrepreneurs (e.g. individuals walking between vehicles to sell things such as posters and car fresheners) and speed bumps –- some by design, some not. While navigating these streets, Leila and I had a whirlwind of meetings.

First, we attended the AITEC Conference, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, focused on outsourcing and shared services for NGOs and development agencies. Information, Communication and Technology Services are a top priority for Kenya’s economic growth, especially with the recent arrival of the fiber optic cable in East Africa. Conference attendees included U.S.-based consulting firms Accenture and McKinsey, which made me realize just how big of a market opportunity this must be.

Subsequent meetings included site visits to our existing service partners. From Adept Technologies to Preciss International, I was able to meet bright, qualified youth who are working for Samasource’s partners to provide quality services to U.S. clients (note: English is an official language in Kenya). Many of the employees are current college students, who use their salaries to pay for school –- ranging from engineering to nursing studies. Leila and I conducted a training session with the service partners to review Samasource standard policies and procedures as well as to garner feedback on the existing partnership. A photo from the training session, held at Enablis offices, is below.

Pictured (L to R): Nicholas M. (Beeline), Lakshmi M. (Ken Tech), Lucky V. (Ken Tech), Amos K. (Styles), Benson K. (Preciss), Mwangi M. (Beeline), John S. (Ken Tech), Eunice M. (Styles), Andrew K. (Flytech), Mugure M. (Preciss), Stephen M. (Daproim), Diana G. (Adept) and Leila

Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camps

After a week in Nairobi, we departed for Dadaab Refugee Camps. The camps are located in eastern Kenya, near the Somali border. We traveled by guarded convoy with CARE International. Various check points along the way reminded us that we were in dangerous territory. Our Kenyan hosts were incredibly generous and patient as I snapped endless photos and asked a plethora of arguably naïve questions.

Some 12 hours later, we arrived in Dadaab.

We spent the majority of our time at Dagahaley and Ifo Refugee Camps –- over 90% of the people there are from Somalia and include many women and young men. We trained them on the internet and gauged their interest in completing remote internet-based work, as a way to generate income. Many of the camps have very limited job opportunities and those that do exist (e.g. butchering and ice making) compete with limited resources. This leaves many of the youth susceptible to recruitment by militias. Similar to youth in Nairobi, many of the trainees indicated they would use the funds they earn to pay for schooling. As Leila blogged earlier, we met with one of the Lost Boys of South Sudan – Paul Parach.

After one of the training sessions, a young woman named Abdiyo insisted upon buying me a soda. This woman lives in a refugee camp where the average annual income is extremely low. It was the most generous and delicious soda I have ever received. To learn more about our innovative launch of the Refugee Worker Program, take a look at the following presentation:

Go fish

Two weeks and thousands of miles later, I found myself back in Palo Alto, California. As I commute to Samasource’s San Francisco offices, I reflect on the things this trip has taught me. Nairobi and the refugee camps are very different from my experiences in investment banking and private equity. While I am a novice when it comes to international development, I wonder if the some of the capitalism I practiced on Wall Street is applicable there.

And perhaps the only way to world peace and prosperity is through the creation of opportunities for sustainable, dignified employment.

Our slogan at Samasource, until about a week ago, was “Give Work, Not Aid”. The last portion is a bit controversial and we have wrestled with the unfortunate fact that it may be turning away potential supporters. Our new, simpler slogan, “Give Work”, is open to the idea that countries in Africa and other developing nations may require a two-fold approach. One of aid, to supplement “traditional” government services such as infrastructure and health care, and one of work – a way for individuals to financially support themselves and their families.

Samasource focuses on the latter part. Give Work.

As the proverb goes, “Give a man a fish and you have fed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”. By leveraging technology to create jobs for the next billion, Samasource is teaching individuals how to fish. Fishing … I can’t think of a better way to spend my summer.

Meet Paul Parach. He’s 24, and currently in his second year of high school, thanks to CARE International’s operations in Dadaab. His story will make you stop whatever you’re doing and think about the latent talent of people in refugee camps.

Paul left his small village in South Sudan at the age of 9, chased out by militia groups. He was forced to leave his mother and four sisters back home. After several weeks of walking across the country with a group of other young boys, he arrived at the Kenyan border and then at Kakuma refugee camp.

There, he was shot in the leg by a man from a rival tribe, and moved to the ICU in Nairobi. His leg was paralyzed.

Read the Rest of Paul Parach’s Story

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 is partnering with the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology and Appfrica, an NGO, to host two more Facebook Garages in Africa. These events help young software and web developers learn how to use their skills to create applications for Facebook, the fourth-most trafficked website in the US.

To learn more:

>> Visit the event pages on Facebook: Ghana Uganda

>>Download a flyer for each event: Ghana Uganda

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.