Parity not Charity - Benevolent and beneficial uses for social media and social networking
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Often the methods available to us of ‘helping’ those in the developing world is limited to donating to charities, often large organisations where it is difficult to feel that our contributions are making a difference at a grass roots level.
But there are organisations out there who are harnessing the power of social media, social networking, and crowd sourcing to make a real difference to people’s lives in the developing world, while enabling us in the developed world to really see the difference we can make by ‘giving’ in a non-traditional sense.
Give Now
A new iphone app was released this morning which allows users to help refugees get paid for completing small pieces of work.
The app has been developed bySamasource , an organisation which aims to empower people in developing nations by providing access to paid (often digital-based) work, and CrowdFlower , which connects companies to a crowd sourced workforce. The system benefits workers who are paid for completing small ad hoc tasks, and organisations who can outsource tasks to an unlimited workforce as needs arise.
The Give Work app works on the principle that a few minutes of your time, and a few minutes of time spent by a refugee in a camp in Dadaab, Kenya, means that the refugee is paid for that work. The Give Work app supports these refugees by asking you to complete some short on-screen tasks on the iPhone, which refugees in Kenya are also being trained to complete. This ensures quality assurance for the companies paying for the tasks to be completed, and thus payment for the workers in Kenya. Although the payment amount is small to the western world, to refugees who receive the payment it is a vital source of income.
The app is available to download from the iTunes store right now –it would be great if after you read this you go and get the app and let us know what you think. Its free and wont take more than a few minutes, so do it!
Kiva
Kiva is effectively a crowd sourced micro-financed organisation that supports entrepreneurs in the developing world – lenders are individuals who provide a small loan of about $25 US which you can choose to lend to a goat farmer in Turkmenistan or a fruit-seller in Peru.
The amount of money an entrepreneur needs to borrow is gradually provided by a number of lenders, and the loan is always repaid, and the lender then has the choice of withdrawing the loan or re-investing in another entrepreneur.
Most lenders choose to re-invest the loan, so the initial gift just keeps on giving!
Jolkona
Jolkona aims to address the need for individuals to feel connected to those that their donations will be helping – it allows donors to select small projects individually, and to track the impact their donation is having by directly connecting them to organisations on the ground who make use of the donation.
For example, $100 US can rescue a young girl in Nepal from slavery – Jolkona has partnered with a grass roots organisation in Nepal who use the donation to rescue a child, and then send the donor a picture of the child who has been rescued so the donor feels the direct impact of their action. It is hugely motivating for many people to see the huge impact on real lives of even small amounts of donated money.
It is amazing that small actions taken by individuals can have such a large impact on those who most need the support. And when the power of digital and social media is used by innovators who see the potential to do great things with the technology, amazing things can happen!
If there are any other such initiatives that you know of, we’d love to hear your comments below.
Related links:
http://mashable.com/2009/10/13/give-work-iphone/
http://www.samasource.org/iphone/
http://crowdflower.com/
http://www.kiva.org/
http://www.jolkona.org/
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But there are organisations out there who are harnessing the power of social media, social networking, and crowd sourcing to make a real difference to people’s lives in the developing world, while enabling us in the developed world to really see the difference we can make by ‘giving’ in a non-traditional sense.
A new iphone app was released this morning which allows users to help refugees get paid for completing small pieces of work.
The app has been developed by
The Give Work app works on the principle that a few minutes of your time, and a few minutes of time spent by a refugee in a camp in Dadaab, Kenya, means that the refugee is paid for that work. The Give Work app supports these refugees by asking you to complete some short on-screen tasks on the iPhone, which refugees in Kenya are also being trained to complete. This ensures quality assurance for the companies paying for the tasks to be completed, and thus payment for the workers in Kenya. Although the payment amount is small to the western world, to refugees who receive the payment it is a vital source of income.
The app is available to download from the iTunes store right now –it would be great if after you read this you go and get the app and let us know what you think. Its free and wont take more than a few minutes, so do it!
Kiva
Kiva is effectively a crowd sourced micro-financed organisation that supports entrepreneurs in the developing world – lenders are individuals who provide a small loan of about $25 US which you can choose to lend to a goat farmer in Turkmenistan or a fruit-seller in Peru.
The amount of money an entrepreneur needs to borrow is gradually provided by a number of lenders, and the loan is always repaid, and the lender then has the choice of withdrawing the loan or re-investing in another entrepreneur.
Most lenders choose to re-invest the loan, so the initial gift just keeps on giving!
Jolkona
Jolkona aims to address the need for individuals to feel connected to those that their donations will be helping – it allows donors to select small projects individually, and to track the impact their donation is having by directly connecting them to organisations on the ground who make use of the donation.
For example, $100 US can rescue a young girl in Nepal from slavery – Jolkona has partnered with a grass roots organisation in Nepal who use the donation to rescue a child, and then send the donor a picture of the child who has been rescued so the donor feels the direct impact of their action. It is hugely motivating for many people to see the huge impact on real lives of even small amounts of donated money.
It is amazing that small actions taken by individuals can have such a large impact on those who most need the support. And when the power of digital and social media is used by innovators who see the potential to do great things with the technology, amazing things can happen!
If there are any other such initiatives that you know of, we’d love to hear your comments below.
Related links:
Su Debnath, Account Director
Labels: iPhone, Social media
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