Give Work: Reversing Poverty One Job at a Time

Despite trillions of dollars in Western aid, 2.8 billion people worldwide still struggle to survive every day. We need a better solution. Founder and CEO of Samasource, Leila Janah, shows that poverty is a problem we can solve - not just hope to alleviate - by giving work.

When asked if they'd rather receive aid or work, the world's poorest people will always choose work. But the world's richest countries continue to send aid, targeting the symptoms, not the causes of poverty. Western countries have the best intentions, but charity-based aid often does more harm than good, and billions of people continue to suffer.

According to Leila Janah, giving dignified, steady, fair-wage work is the most effective way to eradicate poverty. Samasource, a nonprofit she founded with the express purpose of outsourcing work from the tech industry to the bottom billions, has provided over $10 million in direct income to tens of thousands of people the world had written off, changing the trajectory of their lives for the better. Janah and her team go into the world's poorest communities - from the refugee camps of Kenya to rural Arkansas to the blighted neighborhoods of California - and train people to do digital work for companies like Google, Walmart, and Microsoft. She is making a real difference, breaking the cycle of poverty at its source.

Picking up where Dambisa Moyo's Dead Aid leaves off, Give Work debunks traditional and cutting-edge aid models and offers much needed solutions. From a school for the blind in Ghana to the World Bank, Janah has tested various Give Work business models in all corners of the world. She shares the poignant stories of many who have benefited from Samasource's work and offers us a blueprint to change the world for good.

We can end extreme poverty. And in Give Work, Janah shows us how. Give work, and you give the poorest people on the planet a chance at happiness. Give work, and you give people the freedom to choose how to develop their own communities. Give work, and you create infinite possibilities.