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I'm Emily Golagosky with
Women 2.0's In Conversation Series. |
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I'm here with Leila Chirayath Janah
from Samasource.org, |
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a social enterprise that aims
to provide jobs for skilled |
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but economically
disadvantaged individuals. |
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Samasource is a social enterprise. |
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We are working on two
main programs right now. |
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The first is defining what we're calling
socially responsible outsourcing, |
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which is really a new brand of outsourcing
that focuses on small and medium sized |
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service providers in very
poor parts of the world. |
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And the second is we're
connecting these small companies |
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to a global market for services. |
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We're running a Pilot now
with eight small firms, |
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in Nairobi, rural India - Bihar,
and Kathmandu, Nepal. |
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And we do diligence, do due
diligence on the firms rather, |
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and then connect them to clients, based on, |
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a number of different
skill sets they may have. |
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So, how did you get interested in
this work, and why is it important? |
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This interest has had a
really long incubation period. |
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I first got interested in social justice
as a high school student, in Los Angeles. |
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I actually did work for the ACLU,
and a couple of organizations locally. |
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But, as a child of Indian immigrant parents, |
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I was always curious about poverty
in India, where they had grown up, |
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and I never really had
much direct exposure to it. |
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When I was about 16 years
old, I decided that I wanted |
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to leave my cushioned,
suburban life in Los Angeles |
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and get out there and
explore the world a bit more, |
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and I ended up getting a scholarship,
that I convinced the organizers of, |
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to let me take and use to travel in Africa. |
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So, I found a volunteer opportunity in
rural Ghana, in a small town called Akuapem, |
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and it was sort of a shock
to there as a 17 year old. |
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But it was also the best
thing that I've ever done. |
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I think it really impacted me. |
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My students, and I had about 60 of
them, they were middle school aged, |
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were incredibly bright,
heartbreakingly bright. |
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I had a student in particular, Femi Abbas, |
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who would stay after class with
me, for two three hours a day, |
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and ask me about
opportunities outside of Ghana, |
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and how he might become a writer, and, you
know, where he might be able to get funding, |
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and it really crushed me that people
with Femi's talent were unable to succeed. |
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And I think that as an American,
especially this Election Year, |
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we've all become very
excited about meritocracy, |
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and about providing people with opportunity, |
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if they have the skill and the drive,
to take those opportunities. |
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And I think that for a vast,
vast portion of the world, |
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there simply are none of those opportunities. |
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And I think that's the biggest
moral challenge of our time. |
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So, this seed was
planted about ten years ago, |
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and I ended up studying African Development, |
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working for the World Bank in
a couple of development projects, |
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and getting kind of frustrated
with the large scale approach |
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to economic development
in places like Africa. |
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I think that while large infrastructure
projects are certainly needed, |
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what I found time and time again, is that
the Femis of the world were being ignored |
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by these development programs. |
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And I decided, that as an individual, the
area that I could have the most impact, |
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was in starting some kind of an organization |
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that could provide more good job
opportunities for people like Femi |
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and that was the initial
inspiration behind Samasource. |
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And how have you found
the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, |
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as a place to make this idea come to life? |
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I think that Silicon Valley,
and I was there for about a year |
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before moving up to
San Francisco a month ago. |
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I think that Silicon Valley is unparalleled
as a nexus of entrepreneurship, |
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of Social entrepreneurship,
and the regular kind. |
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And I think that being
around technology companies, |
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and around the sort of innovation that's
common here, has been really beneficial. |
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We share office-space with
several Y combinator startups, |
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and their work ethic has been
really inspiring, and I think, |
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frankly, many of the
non-profits that I know about, |
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just don't kinda have that same approach. |
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So, I think from that perspective,
it's been really helpful, |
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and I think from the perspective of
being a socially focused organization, |
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the Bay Area is an
incredibly receptive place. |
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There are tons of non-profits active here. |
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There's a whole, there's a nascent
movement around social capital, |
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that's really rooted in the Bay Area. |
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There was a Social Capital Markets's
conference here a few weeks ago, |
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that we participated in. |
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So I think there's also this
sort of enabling environment |
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that you need to succeed
as a social entrepreneur here, |
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in a way that doesn't exist elsewhere.
- Thank you so much. |
