Leila Janah founded Samasource back in 2008 and has since seen it grow into a major global nonprofit that works closely with giants such as Google, Microsoft and eBay. Samasource works by operating in third world countries with high levels of poverty and employing people to work within the tech departments of these conglomerates.

Samasource began out of Janah’s recognition to bring jobs to a demographic that had previously been untouched. She realized that while millions of people – initially in India – were receiving well-paying jobs outsourcing for major companies, an even larger amount of people were living in impoverished conditions with no future.

Janah began developing her own program called Samaschool to outsource jobs specifically to those in poverty. Samaschool does this by providing an introductory training program that centers on rudimentary technological skills.

Janah saw almost immediate success in her campaign to spread jobs around the world. In 2013, she launched Samasource within the United States to provide jobs for those in poverty here at home. In a recent interview with Wired, Janah said, “We were approached by a community college in Northern California, which has a lot of rural poverty. They approved our online curriculum so people could sign up and take Samaschool as a class. Since then we’ve expanded to several cities in California and one site in Arkansas.”

Samasource in the United States differs from the organization’s international agenda by connecting people to already established businesses such as Task Rabbit and Uber and having them begin working there immediately.

Leila Janah is doing something unique. She has singlehandedly created an entirely new means for millions of people to pull themselves out of poverty. By using the dominance of technology in the 21st century, Janah has established a new marketplace for an all too large demographic of people in the world.

With the success of Samasource internationally and the promising developments within the grassroots Samaschool, millions more will continue finding new jobs and exciting opportunities in new career paths.

– Diego Catala

Sources: Wired, Samasource
Photo: Flickr