Samasource: Give Work
Microwork for the next billion - We bring dignified, computer-based work to women, youth, and refugees living in poverty
Samasource enables marginalized people, from refugees in Kenya to women in rural Pakistan, to receive life-changing work opportunities via the Internet. The core of this concept is microwork - little bits of labor that can be performed anytime and anywhere that add up to a real livelihood for our partners. In parallel, we enable socially responsible companies, small businesses, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs in the US to contribute to economic development by buying services from our workforce at fair prices.
Our model has three parts. First, we screen and select Service Partners, locally-owned small businesses, non-profits, and groups of home-based workers, from the poorest parts of the world. Our Service Partners must satisfy stringent social impact and quality criteria that verify their contribution to economic development and their capacity to deliver good work. Next, we provide our Service Partners with free business training, using live sample projects, web-based tools, and site visits. Finally, we market our Service Partners' services to paying clients through a website and sales team based in San Francisco. Our clients range from low-income entrepreneurs in Jersey City to mid-sized nonprofits, such as Benetech, and technology startups.
Samasource derives its name from the Sanskrit word sama, which means equal. Samasource is a 501(c)(3) non-profit social business. Our management team and global advisory board have over forty years of experience working in technology, remote work, and social and economic development for leading institutions such as the Clinton Foundation, Kiva.org, the Ford Foundation and the World Bank.Thus far we have worked with 18 small businesses, nonprofit training centers, and rural data centers that provide dignified jobs to more than 500 marginalized individuals in Kenya, Uganda, Cameroon, Ghana, and Pakistan.
