Think you have it tough in this stubborn, seemingly endless recession? I am not one to make light of the extremely tight job market in nearly every industrialized nation, but try getting a job in a Kenyan refugee camp.
Okay, so now that I’ve made everyone feel guilty, I’m going to tell you about a way to help those people (who don’t have the luxury of an unemployment check) find work with the click, or slide, of a finger. Give Work is a free application, created by San Francisco-based start-ups Samasource and CrowdFlower, that empowers ordinary people with fancy smartphones to help refugees train for better careers.
Samasource is a nonprofit that provides technology and job opportunities to refugees, specifically those in the world’s largest refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya. Here’s a short video advertising the Give Work campaign:
CrowdFlower, meanwhile, connects refugees and other disadvantaged individuals around the world with companies in the developed world for research-based work. For example, a company might employ someone to review Twitter “tweets” to determine which are positive and which may require some type of damage control, or to remove spam messages. Since CrowdFlower requires third-party validation that the work has been completed, the iPhone app in essence employs users to provide that critical function.
An article in GigaOm discusses the practicality of using third-party validations:
“Sometimes tweets are misunderstood because of American slang, according to CrowdFlower CEO Lukas Biewald, so your contribution helps the refugees produce high-quality results despite cultural differences.”
So if you find yourself sitting on the couch with your iPhone in hand after the daily job hunt, maybe it would be more productive to turn off “Springer” and help someone else make a little scratch.
Photo courtesy of Executive Office of the President of the United States, via Wikimedia Commons
