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Category Archives: Technology

A Parisian in Nairobi – Part 2

December 31, 2009 in Africa, Facebook, Nonprofits, Other, Social Enterprise, Stories, Technology by Laetitia

Nairobi is the largest and most modern city in East Africa. It is growing very fast and is the center for many organizations and businesses in the region. Though the word Nairobi means “Place of cool water” for Masaii people, it is not the case this month (November ’09). In fact, the current drought striking [...]

Fishing Expedition: One Intern’s Journey from Wall Street to Refugee Camps

July 15, 2009 in Africa, Social Enterprise, Stories, Technology by Kate Brennan

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.

Samasource to host Facebook Developer Garages in Ghana, Uganda

November 27, 2008 in Africa, Facebook, Social Enterprise, Technology by leila

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 [...]

A new look for Samasource

November 20, 2008 in Africa, Outsourcing, Social Enterprise, Technology by leila

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.

Samasource wins contract with Bookshare.org

September 9, 2008 in Africa, Nonprofits, Outsourcing, Technology by leila

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 [...]

Samasource Developer Featured in NY Times

July 21, 2008 in Africa, Outsourcing, Social Enterprise, Technology by leila

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 [...]

Rural BPO Drishtee featured on CNN

June 12, 2008 in Africa, Outsourcing, Technology by leila

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYvoHeYe8fk]
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 [...]

Samasource gets hip with a new video

April 22, 2008 in Africa, Outsourcing, Social Enterprise, Technology by leila

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18hRwHOSNbY]
Many thanks to Michael Wheet, filmmaker extraordinaire.

Samasource launches outsourcing survey

March 20, 2008 in Nonprofits, Outsourcing, Technology by leila

In an effort to better understand the outsourcing needs of US non-profits, socially-responsible companies, and small businesses, we’ve launched a brief survey.

Responses will be used to recruit vendors that meet our quality and social impact criteria for our pilot project, starting this month.

The New and Improved Facebook Platform

March 5, 2008 in Facebook, Outsourcing, Technology by leila

Ben Ling, Director of Platform Product Marketing at Facebook, offered some valuable insights on the direction of Facebook’s platform to attendees of Graphing Social Patterns in San Diego. His talk emphasized increased support for applications that add long term value (such as Causes, an app that helps users support non-profit organizations) and tools that eliminate [...]