3. Acknowledgement
I would like to express my special thanks of
gratitude to my teacher MISS.KANCHAN BINYANI
as well as our principal DR. INDU SHAHANI who
gave me the golden opportunity to do this
wonderful project on the topic SOCIAL
ENTREPRENUR (business environment), which also
helped me in doing a lot of Research and I came to
know about so many new things
I am really thankful to them.
Secondly I would also like to thank my parents and
friends who helped me a lot in finishing this project
within the limited time.
I am making this project not only for marks but to
also increase my knowledge.
THANKS AGAIN TO ALL WHO HELPED ME.
4. Introduction to
social
entrepreneurship
Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to
society‟s most pressing social problems. They are ambitious and
persistent, tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for
wide-scale change.
Rather than leaving societal needs to the government or business
sectors, social entrepreneurs find what is not working and solve
the problem by changing the system, spreading the solution, and
persuading entire societies to take new leaps.
Social entrepreneurs often seem to be possessed by their ideas,
committing their lives to changing the direction of their field.
They are both visionaries and ultimate realists, concerned with
the practical implementation of their vision above all else.
5. About Leila
Leila Janah is the Founder and CEO of Samasource, a non-
profit social business that gives digital work to impoverished
people around the world.
In her own words she says „I am a social entrepreneur using
technology and new business methods to reduce poverty and
promote social justice. Currently, I‟m Founder and CEO
at Samasource, a non-profit business that connects people living
in poverty to microwork — small, computer-based tasks that build
skills and generate life-changing income, now part of the broader
field of impact sourcing. In 2011, I cofounded Samahope, a
crowdfunding site for medical treatments in developing countries
advised by the cofounders of Kiva. Samasource and Samahope
have been featured widely in publications including The New York
Times, CNN, Forbes, and Fast Company.When I‟m not working on
Sama ventures, I lend my time as a board member to CARE
USA, a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty.‟
6. Background
Janah was born on October 9th, 1982 in Buffalo, New York.
Janah‟s father sensitized her to the issue of poverty from an early
age. She attended the California Academy of Math & Science. She
won a college scholarship at 16, but convinced them to let her
spend it teaching in Ghana, and attended Harvard University,
graduating in 2005 with a degree in African Development
Studies. While at Harvard, she consulted to and authored papers
for the World Bank's Development Research Group
and Ashoka on social and economic rights.
Janah left the firm in 2007 to become a visiting scholar
at Stanford University with the Program on Global Justice,
founded by law professor Joshua Cohen. That year, she co-
founded Incentives for Global Health with Thomas Pogge, Leitner
Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale, and
Aidan Hollis, a Professor of Economics at the University of
Calgary.
The organization received its initial funding from the International
Business in Development Challenge and the Stanford Social
Enterprise Challenge in 2008.
7. Samasource
Samasource is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to
alleviate worldwide poverty by connecting unemployed women
and youth in impoverished countries to digital work. One of the
first organizations to engage in impact sourcing, Samasource
uses a proprietary internet-based model called “microwork” to
break down large-scale digital projects from clients into smaller
tasks for workers to complete. These workers are trained in
basic computer skills and paid a fair wage (as determined by
the Fair Wage Guide) for their labor.
Samasource, a social business that connects over 800 women,
youth, and refugees living in poverty to digital work. Samasource,
a grantee of the Rockefeller and Mulago Foundations, is a
recipient of the Netexplorateur Innovation Prize and has been
profiled by CBS, CNN, and The New York In 2010, she was named
one of Fast Company‟s Most Innovative Women in Technology.
Leila received a BA from Harvard University.
Samasource is headquartered in San Francisco, California and
maintains a field office in Nairobi, Kenya. The organization
currently partners with 10 delivery centers
across Haiti, India, Kenya, and Uganda, and has previously paid
workers in Pakistan, Ghana, andSouth Africa. As of April, 2013,
the organization had impacted 14,100 workers and their
dependents in these countries by paying them over $3 million in
wages.
The prefix “Sama” in the title of the organization and that of its
proprietary products, services, and programs is a Sanskrit word,
meaning “equal”. Janah has stated that her organization‟s name
“refers to leveling the playing field.”
8. SamaUSA
In 2013 Samasource launched a pilot program in northern
California called SamaUSA, designed to give low-income
community college students digital skills with which they can earn
a living. The model focuses on training students to perform digital
work competitively, to prepare them for success on online work
sites like oDesk and Elance. Leila Janah first introduced SamaUSA
in a 2011 TechCrunch article which attracted controversy for its
assertion that Americans could compete with African and Asian
workers who can afford to take assignments that pay lower fees.
Samahope
1 in 8 women die in childbirth in Sierra Leone. Millions
more suffer from conditions that could be easily treated
with a simple surgery
Samahope is a website I launched to crowdfund medical
treatments for people who can‟t afford them. Samahope was
formed with Dr. Darius Maggi, Shawn Graft and Shivani Garg in
2011 after a visit to Sierra Leone, where I met a group of women
who were suffering from complications after giving birth outside
of hospitals. We partner with local clinics and hospitals in poor
communities with a track record of excellent care and fiscal
discipline. Partners post profiles of real patients who have
recently received or are waiting for a surgery. You choose the
patients you‟d like to fund and donate via PayPal or credit card.
Each month, Samahope collects donations for each patient and
sends them to the partner performing the surgery. Our partners
posts updates on a regular basis so donors may track the
progress of the surgeries they fund.
It‟s simple: no woman or child should suffer from a preventable
condition that modern medicine can fix. Samahope will change
the status quo.
9. HIF
The Health Impact Fund (managed by the non-profit Incentives
for Global Health) is a new way of stimulating research and
development of life-saving pharmaceuticals using monetary
incentives. To provide wide access, medicines need to be
affordable-but low prices don‟t create strong incentives for
innovators to invest in research and development. The Health
Impact Fund offers pharmaceutical innovators a supplementary
reward based on the health impact of their products, if they agree
to sell those products at cost. The proposed Fund is to be
financed mainly by governments.
10. Business model
Samasource‟s proprietary technology platform, the SamaHub,
breaks down complex data projects from large companies into
small tasks that can be completed by women and youth in
developing countries with basic English skills after a few weeks of
training at delivery centers with which Samasource
partners.These delivery centers are required to follow
Samasource‟s social impact guidelines, which include reinvesting
at least 40% of revenue in training, salaries, and community
programs, and hiring workers who were previously earning less
than the local poverty line. Samasource and in-country partners
collaborate on the recruiting process, which targets women and
youth without formal work experience who are earning below a
local living wage.
The Samahub technology features a five-step quality
assurance mechanism that continually gauges the success of each
individual worker. Workers are not, however, in direct
competition with one another as they are
in crowdsourcing models. Samasource‟s staff also makes a point
of understanding the skills native to each region so that it can
channel projects to centers best equipped to handle them.
Samasource currently offers five categories of digital services to
its customers, including content moderation, digital transcription,
and machine learning. Its clients have included
Google, Ebay, Intuit, LinkedIn, and Microsoft.
11. Impact
Samasource measures its impact by capturing longitudinal data
on each of its workers, as well by conducting household surveys,
wage audits, and interviews with workers after they complete
Samasource employment.
The Samasource website identifies two key metrics:
1. Total workers paid and trained
2. The change in income per worker
As of April 2013, the organization had connected over 3,400
women and youth supporting an average of over three
dependents each to paid employment, thereby directly impacting
14,100 people. Samasource workers had collectively experienced
an income increase of 114%, and 75% of them had “graduated”
from Samasource into “formal employment opportunities”.
Samasource‟s data further suggests that the benefits of a living
wage reach far beyond financial implications. An impact report
published by the organization in 2013 claims that 76% of their
workers reported improvement in overall physical health, and
several others were more willing to “engage with their
communities…this effect is even more pronounced for women.”
Third-party studies that have been conducted on Samasource‟s
model have reached similar conclusions. A student from the
London School of Economics and Political Science found that
workers training on the Samahub in rural India improved their
problem-solving abilities, their social intelligence, their
confidence, and their political perspective. When several workers
staged a protest against what they felt were unfair managerial
practices at their delivery center, they cited the empowering
nature of their new jobs as an inspiration.
12. Reviews and
Accolades
Samasource has received numerous awards and grants, including
the 2012 Secretary‟s Innovation Award for the Empowerment of
Women and Girls and the 2012 TechFellows Award for Disruptive
Innovation. The organization was also part of POPTech‟s 2010
Class of Social Innovation Fellows.
Leila Janah, founder and CEO of Samasource, was named one of
the 50 people who will change the world by WIRED, and one of
the 100 most creative people in business by Fast
Company. Janah is a frequent speaker and writer on social
entrepreneurship, outsourcing, crowdsourcing, and digital
work. She is the recipient of a 2011 World Technology Award, a
Social Enterprise Alliance Award, and a Club de Madrid award.
Janah was named one of the Most Influential Women in
Technology by Fast Company in 2009. In 2010, Janah received
the Prix NetExplorateur from the French Senate and a World
Technology Award for Social Entrepreneurship for her work with
Samasource. In 2012, Janah was listed in
a Datamation article, 10 Women in Tech Who Give Back for her
work with Samasource.
Janah serves on the board of TechSoup Global and as an advisor
to SpreeTales, a technology startup.
She is a recipient of the Rainer Arnhold and TEDIndia Fellowships,
and serves on the San Francisco board of the Social Enterprise
Institute.
