Overview

An education doesn’t do you much good when there aren’t any jobs, and in Sub-Saharan Africa there are many places where joblessness among the literate is above 60%. The waste of potential is even starker in refugee camps where the educated sit idle, unable to do much that is productive. Donor enthusiasm for computers in Africa has created has led to under-used computer centers, while firms in the U.S. have a lot of simple computer-based tasks they need done. Leila Chirayath Janah saw that the Internet could connect the two to bring decent jobs to those who need them most. Samasource (‘’sama means “equal” Sanskrit) connects jobless women, youth, and refugees to dignified, computer-based work, such as data entry and basic programming. Samasource partners with organizations with access to the educated jobless and available computer capacity, trains them how to do the work, and drums up business through its US sales team. Given the projected growth of exportable computer-based tasks in the US, and computer access and bandwidth in poor countries, Samasource has the potential to bring dignified, decent-paying work to multitudes of literate poor in Africa and beyond.

How it Works

- Samasource recruits reliable organizations – “Service Partners” -- with computer capacity in low-income regions and refugee camps
- Service Partners are trained in five service areas – data and testing services, virtual assistance, transcription and captioning, and web services
- Paying work for Service Partners is generated through Samasource websites and sales team
- Individuals get work through the Service Partner and develop growing skills and online reputation
- Samasource continually checks work quality
- Individuals can eventually get work on their own

Progress so Far

Samasource is a start-up. In their present R&D stage, they are focused on improving their sales pipeline and developing additional consumer-facing businesses to find work for 18 current service partners, including 2 Samasource-incubated Service Partners (the Refugee Work Program and the Women’s Digital League).
On the ground:
- $210,000 in work contracted for 18 current service partners, employing over 500 people in 6 countries, since September 2008.

Measuring Impact

The right indicator: Samasource will measure the average annual additional income per Service Partner worker.

Real numbers: Samasource tracks incomes of a random sample of individuals working with Service Partners and compares them with a matched control group.

Bang for the Buck

How it will Scale

Via the market: while Samasource expects to grow big enough to provide work to thousands of the educated poor, the strategy to reach millions employed is to use donor subsidies to develop and prove a viable business model that others can emulate

HIGH IMPACT Impoverished people earn life-changing income through Samasource, making them less susceptible to hunger, disease, crime, and dangerous or harmful employment

COST-EFFECTIVE @ roughly $350 per beneficiary, the cost of training a beneficiary and finding paying work is quite low. It is too early to determine the long-term impact Samasource makes at this investment level per beneficiary.

SUSTAINED BEHAVIOR Samasource beneficiaries receive cutting edge training and feedback that rewards self-teaching, good customer service, and work performance.

REPLICABLE Samasource uses web-based, automated systems for new Service Partner and client intake, training, project management, payments, and feedback and has scaled to over 500 beneficiaries in less than one year, at a total cost of $35,000.

PATH TO SCALE Samasource is building additional web-based tools to allow donors to participate in peer-to-peer funding of new service partners

Contacts

972 Mission Street, Suite 500
San Francisco, CA 94103
email: leila@samasource.org
phone: (800) 521-6717
web: www.samasource.org | blog: blog.samasource.org
social media: www.facebook.com/samasource and www. twitter.com/samasource