Samasource


Samasource employs low-income workers in developing countries to classify data, among other tech work. Samasource mission is to expand opportunity for low-income individuals through the digital economy. One of the first organizations to engage in impact sourcing, Samasource trains workers in basic computer skills and pays a local living wage for their labor.
Additionally, Samasource provides health and wellness education, professional skills development, a scholarship program to assist with continuing education costs, and a program to provide micro loans and mentorship to aspiring entrepreneurs. Some of Samasource's clients include Walmart, Google, General Motors and Microsoft.
Samasource has offices in San Francisco, California, New York, The Hague, Costa Rica, Montreal, Nairobi, Kenya, Kampala, Uganda and Gulu, Uganda. The organization currently owns and operates delivery centers in Nairobi and Gulu, Uganda, and partners with additional delivery centers in India. Samasource previously had paid workers in Haiti, Pakistan, Ghana, and South Africa.

Name

The prefix "Sama" is a Sanskrit word, meaning "equal". Founder Leila Janah has stated that her organization's name "refers to leveling the playing field."

Business model

Samasource uses a secured cloud annotation platform, SamaHub, to manage the annotation lifecycle. This includes image upload, annotation, data sampling and QA, data delivery, and overall collaboration.
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. In Kenya, Samasource offers an immersive hard and soft skill training program to help prepare underserved youth for the workplace. Samasource delivery centers follow Samasource's social impact guidelines, which includes hiring workers who were previously earning less than the local poverty line, paying a living wage and providing access to benefits. Samasource also invests in training, salaries, and benefits for their agents, offering free or subsidized meals, transportation, healthcare, and professional development.
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.
Originally founded as a non-profit in 2008, Samasource adopted a hybrid business model in 2019.

Impact

Impact methodology

The Samasource website states that the organization defines successful social impact through its formula, which looks at two main components:
  1. Total workers paid and trained
  2. The change in income per worker
Samasource measures its impact by focusing on the relationship between earnings and quality of life- and the role that formal work can play in increasing both. They define a permanent departure from impoverishment as: the ongoing ability to provide one's self and one's dependents with safe housing, nutritious food, education and savings. Samasource's mixed methods measurement and evaluation is focused around three mission-relevant questions:
Samasource uses three core tools to effectively measure impact: a baseline online survey, follow up online survey and baseline and follow-up assessment tests. It supplements these tools with household surveys, post-Samasource interviews, worker interviews and project data.

Impact results

As of September 2017, Samasource has employed 8,697 workers. The program currently employs more than 600 workers across India, Kenya, Uganda, and Haiti. For most of Samasource's workers, this job is their first formal job. The organization reports that 84% of workers continue to work or pursue their education after they leave Samasource. Of those that continue working, 98% remain in the formal sector, primarily in technology related fields.
Samasource's data further suggests that the benefits of a living wage reach far beyond financial security. 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.

History

Entrepreneur Leila Janah founded Samasource in 2008. Janah's father sensitized her to the issue of poverty from an early age, and she became interested in global development while teaching English and creative writing in rural Ghana through a high school scholarship. Seeing her students' ambition combined with the rise in global literacy and access to technology during that time provided the initial inspiration for Samasource.
After completing a degree in African Development Studies from Harvard University, Janah worked as a consultant at Katzenbach Partners and at the World Bank. She quickly became disillusioned, however, by the lack of insight she perceived from World Bank officials into the needs of those the organization was attempting to move out of poverty. While working with multiple clients in the outsourcing sector and nonprofit world, Janah developed the business plan for Samasource.
The organization received its initial funding from the International Business in Development Challenge and the Stanford Social Enterprise Challenge in 2008, and has received additional funding from grantors including the Mastercard Foundation, the Mulago Foundation, the Peery Foundation and Google.org. The organization has since grown into a team and board with backgrounds in distributed work, economic development, and outsourcing.

Press 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. Fast Company named Samasource as "One of the Most Innovative Companies of 2015", saying that Samasource is "defining what it means to be a not-for-profit business". Samasource has also been profiled in TechCrunch, Wired, Business Insider and Forbes, among other publications.
Janah, was included in Conde Nast's Daring 25 list in 2016 and as one of "Five Visionary Tech Entrepreneurs Who Are Changing the World" by The New York Times Style Magazine in 2015. She was also named a "Rising Star" on Forbes' 30 Under 30 list in 2011, 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. She is the recipient of a 2011 World Technology Award, a Social Enterprise Alliance Award, and a Club de Madrid award.