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> Posted by Amanda Lotz, Financial Inclusion 2020 Project Coordinator, CFI

Schwab Foundation describes a social entrepreneur as possessing a healthy impatience. Leila Janah arrived on a red eye to Washington to speak at the Business Civic Leadership Center (BCLC) and then traveled back to San Francisco for another engagement that afternoon. I’d call that a little healthy impatience.

I was fortunate to attend the Global Corporate Citizenship Conference at the BCLC in the company of a highly socially conscious audience to listen to Janah, founder and CEO of Samasource.

Initiated in Kenya in 2008, Samasource provides people at the base of the pyramid, currently earning less than a living wage, with the opportunity to earn a sustainable source of income in support of complex digital projects needed by large enterprises, such as Google and eBay.  Through in-country partners, employees are recruited and validated. Using the internet, Samasource equips its employees with technological skills and 2-4 weeks of training. It then connects them to digital work that requires a “human touch” and is not easily completed by automated systems. Even better, the target employees of Samasource are women and youth (two client populations to consider when discussing current financial inclusion challenges). Since its inception, Samasource has expanded operations to a total of nine countries, including India, Haiti and Pakistan – more evidence of healthy impatience.

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