The Problem:
Reducing poverty, unemployment amongst the most disadvantaged.....
The Social Invention:
A US company employs Cambodian citizens at a low wage to do monotonous data-entry work: nothing new there, one could argue, with western exploitation of cheap foreign labour for financial gain. This company only employs the most disadvantaged citizens of the country, though: those disabled by illness or land mines, slum residents and prostitutes all come through the doors each day.
Furthermore, it actively encourages (and pays half the fees for) its employees to get further education, usually in IT or English language classes. And, while Cambodian factory workers making clothes (also bound for the US) earn as little as seven or eight pounds for a 48-hour week, the typists earn two or three pounds more for a 36-hour week. All of these policies have led some to herald the company as a model for how globalisation can work for all: how capitalism and social purpose can be combined.
'New York police tickets have been processed by workers in Ghana'The company in question, Digital Divide Data (DDD), was started by two North American consultants in 2001 who believed that globalisation need not exploit the poor in the developing world, but could in fact be used to help them. The company has faced controversy from its first major contract, as opponents of the scheme highlighted the low wages being paid to the workers (which is substantially less than the US or UK minimum wage).
DDD goes against standard thinking about how to help the developing world, though, and has attracted significant opposition because of it. Specifically, it is unapologetically a capitalist venture using cheaper foreign labour to maintain its margins. Yet there is nothing new in this in the data-entry world: American insurance claims have been processed in India, articles have been typed up in China, and even New York police tickets have been put through in Ghana.
Where DD differs is that it is also unapologetically a social venture, showing how the most excluded and disadvantaged people in the developing world can be helped by the progression in the information economy.
'Successfully reconciling a global capitalist economy with social justice'To put it another way, should a firm that pays more than its competitors, pays much more than the country average, offers (and encourages) its workers further education, deliberately employs the poorest and most excluded people, and whose founders do not draw a salary, be criticised for running in the black? This goes to the very heart of debates about the global economy and the manifold effects of the IT-led revolution on the developing world.
It also goes to the heart of the question of whether a global capitalist economy and social justice can ever be reconciled successfully. Perhaps it is at that point in the debate when the people affected should be listened to; Rotha Mach, a Cambodian who used to sew jeans in a factory, simply says, “I feel very lucky to work here. I work less time and get better money”. If only the issues surrounding the idea could be so clear and so simple, and so unaffected by the politics and controversy.
- Digital Divide Data, 22 Bigelow St #1B, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA (tel: +1 617 492 4180; fax: +1 508 519 5643;
e-mail: info@digitaldividedata.org; web: www.digitaldividedata.org).
Summarised from an article by June Shih, entitled ‘Only poor country’s destitute may apply’, in the Seattle Times (January 8th 2003). This item was monitored for the Global Ideas Bank by Roger Knights, and originally appeared in the Christian Science Monitor.
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