I recently had the pleasure of spending some time speaking to Leila Chirayath, founder and CEO of Samasource (previously Market for Change), an organization that promotes socially responsible outsourcing to fight "the waste of talent" around the world.

This first part covers Leila's background, the experiences that led her to become an entrepreneur and identify outsourcing as a vehicle for positive social change. The second part of the interview explores Samasource's business model, and its perspectives in more detail.

I hope you enjoy learning about this story, as I very much did.

Francisco Noguera: Leila, what is your background and how did you become a social entrepreneur?

Leila Chirayath: I'll start with a story on why I care about development to begin with, and why I think that waste of talent is the biggest challenge in development that we have yet to tackle.

In my senior year of high school I got a scholarship to go and volunteer in Ghana; I graduated early and went there for six months to volunteer as an English teacher in a small province north of the Capital, which had no electricity, no running water and one telephone for a whole village.

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File this under the eye-catching-BoP-design category and add it to the list of fascinating cycle innovations intended to meet multiple needs for the poor - in this case, the challenges of water filtration and transportation.

The product is called the Aquaduct, a tricycle designed by a team of five at IDEO that stores water in a twenty gallon tank in the back of the bike's wide, blue frame. As the user travels back home, the energy they expend pedaling is used to filter the water into a removable two gallon tank that rests in front of the handlebars.

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In my previous post, I suggested that BoP enterprises should consider partnering with faith based organizations (FBOs) on the ground, particularly in countries where religion plays a large role. In this post, I’d like to put forth another distinct, but similar idea: FBOs in the West can play a large part in the overall BoP Movement. Crazy, right? Maybe not.

A recent article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review highlighted the results of a survey on charitable giving in the United States. The survey showed that there is a gap between donor intent and actual giving. 47% of the respondents to the survey stated that they gave money in order to assist the needy. However, in actual giving, only 6% of donor dollars was given to organizations that primarily seek to meet the basic needs of people in the United States. Internationally, only 2% of donor dollars was allocated to assisting of those in need. So where is all the money going? Answer: FBOs.

Time to sound the alarm, right? “Wake up, donors! Smell the coffee. Start channeling your money elsewhere.” This is probably the reaction most on this blog would have.

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