Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

Carol Wanjiku is the CEO of Daproim . She’s an incredible social entrepreneur I just visited with in Nairobi, Kenya. She runs a for-profit social enterprise named Daproim that provides data entry services using disadvantaged students as their primary workforce. We go way back with her firm. In 2008, we were the first customer of Samasource as they were getting started. Samasource connected us with Daproim in Nairobi to proofread books for our Bookshare project. Bookshare is our large digital library for students with disabilities such as blindness or dyslexia. We use digital ebooks at Bookshare’s core, which can easily be turned into braille, large print or digital audio (using synthetic speech technology). We had just won a large contract to deliver high-quality accessible textbooks to students with disabilities in the U.S., and we needed more help. Samasource connected us with a winning team, and we’ve been using Daproim ever since. I visited Daproim four years ago, and wrot...

As I noted in my first blog on my African trip, I was delighted with the entrepreneurial culture in Nairobi, Kenya. A social entrepreneur who very much exemplified this was Stephen Muthee, founder of Daproim, a data entry social enterprise based in Nairobi. We were introduced to Steve and Daproim through the great offices of Leila Janah and Samasource, the "Give Work" people. Leila's dream has been to connect the people of East Africa with dignified digital work, and connecting Steve to our Bookshare team has been highly successful for Daproim, Samasource and Bookshare! It's part of what we call our social enterprise supply chain. It's so cool to come into an office in Nairobi's Central Business District and see a couple of dozen people working on transcribing textbooks for Bookshare's users with print disabilities. Steve wanted me to work my way around the office shaking everybody's hand! I was happy to thank everybody for their work on behalf ...