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

Samasource is excited to have Denise ‘Roz’ Sewell, Director of Crisis Mapping for the Ushahidi Haiti Project, sharing a blog post with us from her recent travels to the 1,000 Jobs / Haiti site in Mirebalais. There she introduced the Samasource work team to several new software innovations that make pinpointing the locations of  emergencies much more accurate. This post also appeared on the Ushahidi blog.

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I am a crisis mapper. I have been mapping need in Haiti. That means that I take a message (from Twitter, Facebook, SMS), and based on information contained within the message, I place it on a map. Primarily, I have been working with the Ushahidi Haiti project and the Mission 4636 group of organizations. Through the short-code 4636 we created a picture of the evolving crisis in Haiti that was unprecedented in both its scope and timing. However, I live in Boston. I am from Atlanta. Honestly, it makes no sense for me to be the one mapping locations in Haiti when there are Haitians ready and willing to interact in the discussions of their own reconstruction.

So, I travel to Haiti. As a part of the Ushahidi Haiti project run by the Fletcher Team, one of our primary goals is to transfer skills and knowledge to the affected populations so that they can use everything we’ve learned through the 4 months we’ve spent working on this project. This means that the purpose of my trip was two-fold: 1 – asses the potential to transfer our knowledge to a single Haitian organization in Haiti and 2 – begin to transfer knowledge to any existing organizations that could use it.

Naturally, I went to Mirebalais. One of the key members of the Mission4636 group is Samasource – an organization bringing computer-based jobs to disadvantaged communities around the world. In a partnership with 1,000 Jobs they set up a computer center in Mirebalais, Haiti to translate messages coming into 4636 from Creole into English. I went to this computer center ready and willing to transfer my knowledge about crisis mapping, technology, and the Ushahidi platform.

What I have loved about my work in Haiti is that oftentimes when I feel like I have something to say or give, Haitians give it back to me ten fold. In my trip to Mirelabais I know I taught the workers how to find coordinates using Open Street Map, but I can definitely say that they taught me so much more – they taught me about Haiti.

The first day of my trip, the directors of the 1,000 Jobs site bring me to the center. Before my training, we sat in the office and talked about Haiti. We talked about their lives and ideas for the country, and how hard they’ve worked to get to where they are. I was afraid that my trip would be considered another burden or task they need to supervise. Instead, I received the resounding feedback, “No, this is the idea, we need to bring more skills to Haiti. Thank you.”

Later, I sat down with six intelligent, young Haitians eager to learn this new skill. I show them the Haiti Crisis Map and walk them through the training documents. Then, I show them the satellite imagery feature and how there is an image of this exact computer center building from the sky on the Internet. I teach them how to find their houses. They picked it up immediately and started laughing to each other, finding their parents’ or aunts’ houses once they mastered the current location. They loved it, and they turned to me and said, “I didn’t know this could exist for Haiti.”

A screenshot of the crisis mapper software in action

The next day I taught them Ushahidi, which again they understood immediately. I sat back and watched the morning shift train the night shift on creating a report, and then suddenly I felt useless – I had trained an amazing group in the morning and they understood the idea of crisis mapping so well that I could sit back and just listen. Occasionally, they would ask me a question but really I remained a quiet bystander watching Haitian crisis mapping happen the way it was suppose to happen – with Haitians.

Roz leads a training session in Haiti

Later that day, some of the 1,000 Jobs workers took me around Mirebalais. We had lunch at a small restaurant, where the typical Haitian spaghetti breakfast was served. They showed me the rest of town and talked about their lives at university before the earthquake. They asked me about Facebook and wanted to know my opinions about music. They talked about their families and their friends. They just talked about life.

Now that I am back in the US I realize the unbelievable importance of this trip, and I realize that these workers actually trained me. They showed me Haiti as not just a crisis and not just a map. They reminded me there is a country underneath all the rubble and in fact, there is a country despite the rubble. They showed me Haiti.

Social Change 2.0 – Using the Web for Good

Curious to find out more about how the web is shaping the future of the “social change” movement? Come find out on May 3! Hear from an exceptional group of speakers who are using the power of information technology to achieve social impact offline.

Date: Monday, May 3rd, 2010

Right before the January 12th earthquake in Haiti, Samasource  brought on its newest Service Partner, 1,000 Jobs/Haiti. In the wake of the earthquake, the Haitian team immediately got to work on an important new project, translating emergency SMS messages as part of the Mission 4636 project. Samasource is helping to rebuild lives by creating much needed jobs.

Our team lead on the ground is Frednel, who is doing an amazing job as the amazing manager at 1,000 Jobs/Haiti. He has interviewed some of the workers to find ot more about what this effort means to them, their circumstances in Haiti and the importance of work.

Richard Pierre

Frednel: Hello, please tell us about yourself. What is your name? Where do you live? What kind of things did you study in the past?

Richard Pierre: My name is Richard Pierre. I was born in Mirebalais and live in the place of my birth. I am married and have two children. In Mirebalais, I started my elementary study at St. Pierre College in 2003. I did my secondary study at Sacre-Coeur College also in Mirebalais. My dream was to obtain a diploma in civil engineering; unfortunately, after I reached level three, I was dropped because of economic problems. The person that helped me in school died in a great truck accident in Haiti. In the same year, 2005, I closed my University file because the fees of the university were too expensive

Two years after, I beneficiated from a scholarship to study computer science in the Dominican Republic at (UTESA) Universidad Tecnologica de Santiago. While I was studying at UTESA university, I beneficiated, thanks to my intelligence a favor from the Director of the university to study the regular English and German proficiency. I obtained several certificates in the following options including informatics, Spanish and English languages in Dominican Republic.

Frednel: What kinds of work did you do, before working with Samasource?

Richard Pierre: Before working with Samasource, I was jobless; however, sometimes, I’ve worked as a translator for temporary foreign missions in Haiti. I also used to work as a computer repairman not for a company or an administration but for traveling customers. I’ve worked for myself, but the money I made was not enough to take care of myself especially when customers had no computers out of work. Two weeks would pass without the earning of a single gourde.

Frednel: What does work with Samasource mean to you, now? Has it affected your life?

Richard Pierre: No word and expression can explain the joy, happiness and satisfaction that Samasource has brought to my family and I. In the past, despite my knowledge and professional ability, I never had the chance to find a job to provide for my family. I felt sorrow, sadness and hunger in this poverty and hell. Thanks to Samasource, my life is really changing because they give me a job, and it’s a great relief for my family and I.

Frednel: Everyone on our team is very sad for the terrible tragedy of the earthquake in Haiti. Did the earthquake affect you and your family?

Richard Pierre: Because of the earthquake, everyone was very sad. The team whom I am working with now was also very sad after the terrible tragedy that occurred on January 12th, 2010 in Haiti. My family, friends and I were all stumbled and hopeless because we were so scared of the thought that everyone would die due to the shortage of food, water, drugs and shelter. My family was seriously affected by the earthquake because there are about five people who died in my family at Port-au-Prince during the earthquake.

Frednel: How do you feel about doing SMS translations to help survivors of the earthquake?

Richard Pierre: Sometimes, I feel very sad when I translate a tragic message; for example, there was a message that said that there was a person who was still alive under rubble. Sometimes, it’s a baby who is under the rubble, or sometimes it’s a 6 year old child. My heart tears up when I hear these sorts of messages, but I oblige myself to stay strong and make the translations because life is not really easy. Life is difficult, know that anything can happen in life. Life has its ups and downs; this means that a person should be strong and have a lot of courage to resist difficulties in life. Life puts up great fights. In order to live, you have to be a good soldier; when you fall, you have to get up.

I translate the survivors’ messages at the best of my ability in order to understand what they desire to say. This is nearly all I can offer them in assistant. After that, I couldn’t do anything else because I don’t have other opportunities to help them.

Frednel: Thank you!

Richard Pierre: I thank you, Samasource.

Juna Dumornay

Frednel: Hello, please tell us about yourself. What is your name? Where do you live? What kind of things did you study in the past?

Juna Dumornay: My name is Juna Dumornay. I am 25, tall, and a student. I live in Mirebalais on rue L’amarre. I’m studying administration at IHECE (Institute des Hautes Etudes Commerciales et Economiques).

Frednel: What kinds of work did you do, before working with Samasource?

Juna Dormornay: I never worked before my work with Samasource.

Frednel: What does work with Samasource mean to you, now? Has it affected your life?

Juna Dormornay: Samasource means a lot of things for me. This is a big opportunity because I didn’t have a job before, and now with Samasource, I can realize my dream in life. Yes, it has affected my life because with Samasource, I have new experiences and feel my life changing.

Frednel: Everyone on our team is very sad for the terrible tragedy of the earthquake in Haiti. Did the earthquake affect you and your family?

Juna Dormornay: The earthquake affected my family and I; this terrible thing has changed my normal life completely.

Frednel: How do you feel about doing SMS translations to help survivors of the earthquake?

Juna Dormornay: I’m feeling well because doing SMS translation gives support to my brothers and sisters. Helping them in this way is a good thing to me.

Frednel: Thank you!

Juna Dormornay: I thank Samasource for supporting my people in this terrible earthquake. Thank you again.

Jerry Lafontant

Frednel: Hello, please tell us about yourself. What is your name? Where do you live? What kind of things did you study in the past?

Jerry Lafontant: Well, I’m Jerry Lafontant. I’m 31 years old. I was born in Port-au-Prince, and I live in Mirebalais now. I have black eyes and hair, and I’m single. I have one child whose name is Sakia Lafontant; she is 12 years old. My mother has seven children, and I’m the last of my family. I studied operator computer, and I started studying accounting at Center Pilote Drouillard in Port-au-Prince.

Frednel: What kinds of work did you do, before working with Samasource?

Jerry Lafontant: Before working for Samasource, I worked for the government OEA office, issuing national identification cards (CIN).

Frednel: What does work with Samasource mean to you, now? Has it affected your life?

Jerry Lafontant: Samasource means a lot of things for me. I lost my job, and I didn’t have anything to take care of myself and my family. Now with Samasource, I can take care of myself and my family. Yes, Samasource has affected my life so much.

Frednel: Everyone on our team is very sad for the terrible tragedy of the earthquake in Haiti. Did the earthquake affect you and your family?

Jerry Lafontant: The earthquake affect my life because it the first time I witnessed such a thing. First of all, I lost all my very important things. The second is that my child was in Port au Prince, my family and my friends.

Frednel: How do you feel about doing SMS translations to help survivors of the earthquake?

Jerry Lafontant: Whenever I translate a message, I take a moment to thank Samasource because they have provided me an opportunity. I can bring my help to a person who is shouting help me.

Frednel: Thank you!

Jerry Lafontant: Thank you Samasource for your support. You bring a lot of things in my life, and we’re very thankful.

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.

Samasource and Crowdflower received the “Netexplorateurs of the Year” Award for their GiveWork iPhone application at the French Senate in Paris today.  This award is conferred on the most promising digital initiatives each year; in previous years, Twitter and the Dutch augmented reality application Layar were recognized.

Samasource and CrowdFlower were covered on the French news channel TFI and in this video from TerraFemina:

We are thrilled to have Lloyd Taylor on our Board! He brings a great deal of experience from his time at LinkedIn where he scaled their infrastructure to support their rapid growth to developing an infinitely scalable global physical infrastructure for Google’s server farms. We are very lucky to have his input and guidance.

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!

When arriving in Nairobi, one can quickly feel stifled by people, noise, pollution, so the charm of the city is not obvious at first. This city is like a whirlwind that can be stunning. But after the first shockwave, one gets used to this environment and appreciates the kind of life Nairobi has to offer.

I have been working as a Samasource (Samasource.org) fellow for one month now; it has been an experience which can be described as a journey of discovery, adaptation, meeting and sharing. Discovering the lifestyle here, adapting to the time and skills, meeting welcoming partners and talented workers, sharing of ideas and skills.

My initial task as a Fellow was to populate a new online database for Samasource for their website. This site now has the profiles of potential employees which allows new and existing clients to get a better feel of the knowledge, expertise and circumstance/aspirations of people they work with. My task was to compile a profile for every worker who participated in a Samasource project. Once the profiles were reviewed and the photos available I uploaded them onto the Samasource website. They are available on: www.samasource.org/impact.

This is great way to literally “put a face to a name” and to connect the workers with employers. It allows one to forget about the distance and understand Samasource’s goals by linking workers to jobs.

In visiting all the Service Partners and people, I learned how Samasource has given not only a “hand-up” but in fact provided life changing opportunity to workers. One of the workers I met was single mother who could not provide for her two children. Samasource, working with the service provider, has helped her to become independent and take care of her livelihood.

I met all kinds of people during this project, most of them are young and educated, went to or are actually at university in various sectors such as Hotel Management, Information and Technology, International Business, etc. All workers seem really motivated, talented and open minded. The service partners in Nairobi always provided a warm welcomed and I had really interesting discussions with some workers about various subjects as life, work, and the impact of Samasource projects.

Daproim (daproim.com) one of Samasource partners, provided me with office space during this project as well as Internet access. Steve, the president of the company, is an enthusiastic young entrepreneur who wants every employee to be treated with respect. He is interested in various training projects aimed at distressed people. Daproim, like some other Samasource partners, offers part-time work to local university students and facilities for disabled workers. Daproim started in 2006 with four employees, today it has already around 10. The plan is to grow to 20 or 30 people in the next years.

Steve is supporting a Cisco training center a few kilometers away from Nairobi. There, young women, often single mothers, are trained to do data entry and transcription tasks. This training is subsidized by an NGO. These women really want to succeed, and you can see in their eyes their thirst for knowledge. Steve feeds their motivation, while acknowledging that he needs to connect these women with jobs. There is no doubt that future difficulties lay ahead. The notion of hard work is on everyone’s lips, as there are no other means to succeed and the only way for them to benefit from a better life. Thus people are totally ready to offer their best.

So as I get used to the hustle and bustle of the city and plan my visits to the different service partners I feel good about lending a hand. I have to say that in my month of working as a Fellow for Samasource and helping create the Profiles database I too have learned the value of hard work! In my next blog I will write more about a typical work day for me in Nairobi.