While working With the international rescue Committee and Church World service in West Africa and Asia, every day i saw the hardships we associate with these regions: disease, extreme poverty, malnutrition. but it was unemployment that affected me the most. It saddened me when a young man in Guinea approached me asking for work. "hey Mister! Can you find me a job?" he was not begging or asking for a handout. He was simply looking for an opportunity, a job. Many of these young people are exactly the types of go-getters who thrive in the U.S. on a personal level, I identified strongly with these young entrepreneurs and decided to do something to address unemployment head-on.
Outsourcing first caught my attention in 2005 as a great opportunity to connect bright young people in developing countries with opportunities overseas. For the first time ever, the internet gave young talent in developing countries access to the global labor market.
As part of this dream, I founded MyGlobalStaff.Com to provide outsourcing services to small-and medium-sized ngos and businesses throughout the U.S., Australia and Europe. As part of our vision, our firm (currently based in Seattle, but also opening an office in Washington, DC later this year) is dedicated to creating jobs for young people in developing countries. I see outsourcing as a form of development.
Unemployment, and brain drain
As I travel in the developing world, I am always struck by the number of talented young people who are unemployed or underemployed. On a recent visit to Nepal, I counted five young articulate attendants in an otherwise empty hotel lobby. Three of them had university degrees. All of them had relatives abroad.
In Ghana, almost everyone has a relative in Europe or the U.S. anything outside of Ghana is referred to as "outside." and everything happens outside. What must it be like to grow up and watch your role models clamor to travel "outside?"
On a recent visit to Bangladesh, I learned that the Massachusetts institute of technology offers 50 academic scholarships to bright Bangladeshis each year. This is a great opportunity, but how many will return home after their studies? in all likelihood, many, perhaps most, will stay in the U.S., where they will become tax-paying citizens and contribute to the development of the U.S. While the remittances they send home may help relatives survive, they cannot replace the intellectual talent that Bangladesh loses through emigration.
Outsourcing as development
Outsourcing is transforming the global labor market. in the U.S., outsourcing is often demonized for taking jobs away from Americans. But there is another side to the story. Outsourcing offers hundreds of thousands of people in developing countries a route out of poverty. Opportunities abound for young graduates in established outsourcing centers like Manila and Delhi, and new opportunities are being created every day in emerging outsourcing markets like Accra, Jakarta, and Bogota. The competition for talent in these cities is spurring employers to provide employees with higher salaries, healthcare and additional benefits. It is time to consider outsourcing as a form of development. Is there another development practice that single-handedly decreases unemployment, fights brain drain, increases wages and expands healthcare, all while augmenting the tax base of a country and encouraging investment in education and technological infrastructure?
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