Recipes for Getting Involved

Teaching braille in Ghana, Samasource creator Leila Janah met Femi Abbas. “He would listen to the Voice of America and BBC radio, absorbing everything like a sponge ... I became more and more aware of the brainpower and talent at the bottom of the pyramid. There are people like Femi throughout the developing world. If only we could find a way to provide them with the same opportunities we have had, we could right a terrible wrong.” Samasource provides “micro-work” to more than a thousand people in Kenya, India, Pakistan, and Uganda.

Josh Nesbit, co-founder of Medic Mobile, was struck by a community health worker he met in Malawi in 2007: “I will never forget Dixon. He would walk 40 miles to the hospital, six days a week, just so a nurse could check off the patients and sign off on his form. It blew my mind. What an amazing level of commitment, but also what a disconnect!” Medic Mobile, which develops and extends software applications for health care information, including FrontlineSMS, OpenMRS, and Google Apps, serves 2,500 health workers and 3.5 million patients in rural Africa, Central America, and South Asia.