Page 253 - Electronic Commerce

Chapter 5

As more countries around the world developed increasingly reliable transportation and gov-

ernmental infrastructures, companies felt more comfortable contracting with foreign providers for

various business functions, despite technological and cultural differences between countries.

228 One potential source of business service workers exists in the poorest countries of the world.

The lack of infrastructure (water, electricity, and roads) in less-developed countries often limited

the kinds of business activities that could be started in these countries. But the Internet has

started to change that.

When California high school student Leila Janah won a scholarship, she decided to use it to fund

a year of service in Ghana where she taught English and creative writing. She was impressed with

the eagerness and talent of her students. When she returned to the United States, she completed a

degree at Harvard and went to work in international development. In 2008, she started Samasource,

a not-for-profit organization that facilitates connections between these potential workers and work that

large high-tech companies need to have done.

Samasource contracts with large companies that have specific business processes they need

accomplished, such as data entry, transcriptions, creating captions for images, error-checking infor-
mation in databases, translating text, and so on. Samasource then breaks down these projects into

small tasks that workers can perform anywhere in the world, as long as they have an Internet
connection.

Samasource has lifted more than 3800 African, Asian, and Haitian workers and their families

above the poverty line by lining up work for them with companies such as Google, Microsoft,

Walmart, and Getty Images and providing the necessary technology and connectivity resources.

These workers are not highly skilled, but can accomplish specific work if the tasks are broken

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