Give Work: Reversing Poverty One Job at a Time

by Leila Janah

When you ask people living in desperately poor regions whether they would prefer to receive aid or work, they choose work, because work gives them access to the necessities listed above and the long-term ability to procure them without outside help. In addition, work gives them what we in the West prize so highly: agency—the means with which to make their own decisions and chart their own lives.

Anytime I put gas in my car, buy something made with parts, minerals, or labor from overseas, or otherwise participate in the global economic system, I’m part of it. And as a part of it, I’m therefore responsible in some way for the other people in the system. This is the cornerstone of the school of global justice in moral philosophy. For the first time, Pogge gave legitimacy to something I’d felt in my heart but had never been able to rationalize in my head: that I had a moral duty to help people who were far away from me physically, yet victimized by a system in which I was complicit.

Paul Collier is more cautiously hopeful, believing that aid needs to be redirected in the form of Western interventions that can neutralize the four “traps”—conflict (the link among wars, coups, and poverty), natural resources, being landlocked with bad neighbors, and bad governance in a small country—that hurt these countries’ growth. William Easterly asserts that the industry’s lack of interest in seeking feedback and accountability means things are unlikely to get better, because too little is invested in the scientific evaluations necessary to know which programs actually work, and then expand on them.

But aid as we have traditionally known it—large chunks of money flowing to governments? It must be laid to rest. It was flawed from the beginning, modeled after what was meant to be a stopgap solution.

Accepting foreign aid puts recipient governments in the position of having to build relationships with donors instead of upholding their social contract with their citizens and responding to local needs. It essentially usurps a country’s self-determination and ability to come up with its own solutions and plans. It also doesn’t help when the majority of the World Bank’s private investments in sub-Saharan Africa go to companies that use tax havens, thus further starving poor countries of tax revenue they could use to combat poverty, as Oxfam reported in 2016.

He then goes on to explain that while effective altruists will have different definitions for “the most good,” most of those definitions will revolve around some shared values, namely, a preference toward a world with less suffering and longer life spans (a perspective not shared by Mother Teresa, who once said, “I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot. . . . I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people”). All the data tells us that reducing poverty is the best way to achieve that goal. According to Singer, effective altruists, therefore, have a duty to ensure that their donations or humanitarianism actually result in material advances for poor people.

The charity industry has become too wrapped up in making donors feel good about giving—to keep donations coming in—rather than concentrating on treating marginalized people as equals who want the same prosperity and security that we have.

The only thing that will truly solve the problem of poverty is to put more money directly in the hands of the world’s poor. The most sustainable, cost-efficient, and socially beneficial way to do this is to give work via direct job creation to connect these poor populations directly with employers. Impact sourcing can move massive amounts of capital from the coffers of large companies that have enormous procurement budgets, currently not used to fight poverty, directly to poor people.

But the pragmatist in me realized that the fastest path to change is through understanding and shifting economic incentives. Few people ever change unless they have a reason to.

The only way to solve poverty is by creating economic agency, which also shifts the balance of power.

Global poverty is a hairy problem without a clear culprit, but my experiences in Africa, India, Haiti, and now Lebanon have continually reaffirmed that it is only opportunity that is spread unevenly, not potential. That’s the beauty of digital work: it is borderless. It transcends ethnicity, race, religion, and gender. It transcends the artificial walls we build between humans. It seems so obvious to me that breaking down these barriers should be a priority for all of us, not just because it is the right thing to do but because it makes political and economic sense. When we provide opportunities for work instead of aid, we provide a long-term solution that not only lifts people out of poverty but gives them a say in how goods and resources are allocated.

So many have a missionary aspect and approach communities with a certainty that they’re going to teach the people something they don’t already know, or show them the error of their ways. But no one likes to be told they’re doing things wrong, or that their cultural norms are backward. The Samasource model is driven not by ideology but by economic forces, which are ultimately survival forces. We provide opportunity and leave it up to people to decide if they want to take advantage of it. You can do a lot more good in a community when they call you because they think you can bring in revenue and jobs than if you just show up and find a place to plant your flag. Businesses are much less likely to pack up and leave when they feel connected to their community, and when their employees feel invested in the work they are doing and are building reputations based on the work they do. I was always interested in building a pull model, not a push model, so when companies started reaching out to me, I was thrilled.

I think we need to shift this dramatically. Nonprofit founders should have more control over their organizations. The ability to execute on a vision without a lot of distractions is the hallmark of being an entrepreneur, and social entrepreneurs are no different. Depriving them of this chance makes nonprofits bureaucratic, slow, and political.

There were times during the early days of Samasource when I felt like my efforts were just a tiny drop in the ocean of extreme poverty. It’s a feeling all of us in the business of solving huge, complex social problems have faced at one time or another, and maybe repeatedly.

So the idea that I have more of a moral duty to someone who lives near me than someone who lives far away is nonsensical. It defies logic. We are all part of one human race, one giant family, and we have a duty to all living beings to uphold life wherever we can. This isn’t about solving other people’s problems, because there are no “other people.”

Where there is generational trauma and poverty, patience is the only option (giving up is not).

That said, it would be remiss not to acknowledge that many of the jobs people are training for today are vulnerable to offshoring and mechanization. That’s why I believe the industry with the most long-term promise for our domestic workforce is the care economy. Caretaking jobs, especially the ones that require empathy and a human touch, won’t be totally protected from automation, but they will be among the last to go. Elder and child care, housekeeping, art instruction, cooking, pet care, and a number of other jobs are often done by unpaid caretakers but have immense social value and diminishing returns if they’re outsourced.