We’re partnering with CrowdFlower to translate text messages for emergency relief efforts in Haiti, using local workers identified through our newest partner, 1,000 Jobs/Haiti.
This serves a dual purpose: disaster relief and economic development. Our hope is to ensure that some of the aid money going into the reconstruction effort supports Haitian workers directly, at a time when they could really use the extra income. For the full story, check out a summary in the Huffington Post.
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I gave a talk in December at a local TED event on Social Change and Innovation. The main idea is that handouts aren’t very effective, and that digital work is a new way to provide good employment to the people who need it most. I also talked briefly about the “virtual assembly line” — the idea that technology can stitch together groups of casual workers across time zones and geographies to work on large projects for paying customers. This concept is what makes Samasource viable, and I think it lies at the heart of the emerging field of paid crowdsourcing.
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Tags: crowdsourcing, digital work, Samasource, TED, virtual assembly line
Sorry for the spammy post. Until we have a larger budget, I am forced to use blogging and social media to get us more funding. Please vote for Samasource at the Chase Community Giving Challenge. $25K is enough to fund training for 5 new service partners in Africa and South Asia. We’re frugal!
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The Power of Connectedness
I’m reading Christakis and Fowler’s book Connected* while on the road for TEDIndia. It supports a point I make to donors a lot: that connectedness is a basic human need, more basic than food, water or shelter. Those of us who are lucky to live close to our friends and family often forget how important it is to be connected to the people we care about.
Samasource started working with refugees a few months ago, when I had the chance to visit Dadaab, Kenya, the largest refugee site in the world and home to more than 300,000 people living in abject poverty. CARE Kenya convinced a donor to install two computer labs with satellite access in Dadaab last year, which Samasource used to train refugees to do paying work for Silicon Valley companies.
The work is boring (see my post about virtual sweatshops, if you’re curious about this), but it has led to some cool unintended consequences. To wit: several refugees discovered Facebook because they now have a reason to spend time online. Which led to the following exchange on my Facebook wall (Paul Parach is a former Lost Boy who was forced to flee his village on foot at age 9 and has grown up in refugee camps):
This is amazing. Paul first used a computer a month before we met him, and now he’s connected via one degree to Mark Zuckerberg. It’s really hard for me to illustrate how important this is. People like Paul spend the tiny bit of cash they earn in the camp buying cell phone credit. Paul and the other 42 million refugees worldwide are desperate to be connected to the outside world, and Facebook and cell phones are the only way they can do that.
If anyone who reads this knows of good research about the psychological impact of isolation and/or social connectedness after long periods of isolation, please comment — we’re eager to use this as one of our impact metrics.
*using the Kindle app for iPhone; props to Lloyd Taylor of Netelder for making this possible on a social entrepreneur’s budget.
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Give Work Charity Gala
All of Silicon Valley is turning up for our big Gala and Auction on November 12th at the University Club in San Francisco, where we’ll be raising funds to train 700 women, youth, and refugees in computer-based work.
I was anti-fundraisers before (especially the black-tie kind), but when I realized that it takes me a year and a ton of proposal-writing to win measly $60K grants, I changed my tune.
Details are at http://www.samasource.org/gala
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