Giving Compass' Take:

• Samasource is a nonprofit organization that empowers local communities by providing digital literacy training to people in developing countries and connects them with companies that may need help with digital projects. 

• Why is this a more effective form of humanitarian aid than directly handing cash or donations to individuals in need? 

• Another important issue in development work is not only empowering communities of people but also not overlooking the capacity of local NGOs either.

When Ken Kihara graduated from high school in Nairobi and couldn’t find a job, he started scavenging for scraps of metal in a local slum and brewing moonshine, barely earning enough to survive. But he happened to learn about a computer training program nearby and signed up, despite never having used a computer before.

Roughly two weeks later, he was tagging images for Getty Images, making them more easy for users to search by topic. Samasource, a nonprofit that helps provide digital literacy training to people living in poverty in countries like Kenya–and then connects them with corporations that need help with digital projects–hired him through a partner organization called Techno Brain Kenya, and paid him three times the local wage. A year later, he moved his family out of the slum. Three years after that, he was earning $16 a day, a middle-class wage in Kenya.

Direct cash transfers are a popular new form of giving aid to the poor in developing countries. In her new book, “Give Work,” Leila Janah of Samasource argues that giving cash is better than traditional aid–but jobs are even better than cash.

In some cases, organizations have started giving the world’s poorest people direct handouts of money. When the recipients can make their own choices to invest in their homes, or savings, or buy food, studies have found that their incomes increase and their children are less likely to go hungry, and those effects can last.

Read the full article about empowering the developing world through job growth by Adele Peters at Fast Company