Income from Small Computer-Related Tasks

Hello

My name is ricardo, from England, and one of my interests is in how people in developing countries could benefit from computers and the internet.

I’ve been thinking about how people could obtain enough money for their first Computer, Text Editor, etc, and earn some extra money from it. For people in the poor rural areas, one possibility is to earn money by performing small jobs/tasks on the computer for people in the cities of the same country or people in Europe and North America. The customers would be people with a computer at home in their house.

A group of people in a developing country (and friends and colleagues) would set up an internet site for a type of micro outsourcing business, with a name like "Fair Trade Computer Tasks". The term 'outsourcing' is usually used when a company sends work, that is not its main business, to another company. People in developing countries could earn a few Euros/Dollars per task doing things that the customer can't do or doesn’t have time to do. The customer doesn't just give money to the worker, they are doing genuinely useful things.

Many people have a computer but only know how to use 4 or 5 programs, an internet browser, word processor, email, etc. Workers in developing countries could become experts in many other programs and jobs, such as photo or video editing programs, creating internet pages, complex search techniques, etc.

For example, workers could :-

• Improve the appearance of digital photographs (sunnier, bluer sky, fix 'red eye', etc).
• Repair the tears and scratches in old scanned photos using a photo-editor program.
• Type the text of scanned documents that an Optical Character Recognition program cannot recognise (handwriting or old-fashioned type-face).
• Research a topic and write a short report (for example, things to take on a vacation to Africa)
• For a worker with access to the internet, they could search for 1 week for the seller with the lowest price for something that a customer wants to buy on the internet, for example, a TV set. The worker would get a percentage of the saving.
• Website maintenance - The customer requests changes to a website, a volunteer with internet access downloads the site and sends it to the worker in Africa, they make changes, check that a local copy works correctly, then send it back for uploading and final checking by the volunteer.

For example, for Uganda in East Africa, a group of people could start an organisation with the name - "Friends of Uganda Computer Workers". It would have...

1. Customers in the richer cities of Uganda, Europe, North America, etc. These might include Ugandans who have emigrated to Europe, North America, etc, and who want to help other Ugandans by giving them some paid work.

2. Workers in Uganda, with a cheap computer/Personal Digital Assistant/etc. Most of them would work offline, without direct access to the internet.

3. An internet site with a manager in Europe/North America. He or she would advertise services, get descriptions of the work plus files from customers, send completed work to the customers by email and collect payments by Paypal, Nochex, etc.

4. Someone in Uganda with an internet connection (at their house or internet-cafe). He or she would receive descriptions of tasks and customer's files from the internet site and return the files for the completed work. If there is no access to the internet, they could just send a USB-Flash-Drive (Memory Stick), memory card or Compact Disk via the postal service to or from the site manager in the city, Europe, North America, etc. They would also obtain money (in Euros/Dollars/etc) from the Paypal/Nochex account and transfer it to a local bank account. He or she would then convert it into cash. Any other method for transferring money could be used instead, such as Western Union. Another method of payment is to use a credit-card/Paypal online service that sends mobile-phone airtime to people in Africa, which they can use or sell to a village phone operator for cash.

5. A computer, PDA, text editor, etc, for each computer worker.

6. A communication method to connect the computers, etc, in remote areas to the computer with access to the internet. For example, a well-organized ‘Sneakernet’ network (see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sneakernet  or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet ). This would move files on a memory stick, CD or DVD and also take money from the bank to the workers. There is no need to pay for an internet connection for each worker. For more file transfer technologies that don't use the internet, see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Internet.

7. Battery re-charging. The people who operate the sneakernet, which transports the files, could also take batteries to a place with electricity, for recharging.

Like Fairtrade Coffee (coffee at a fair price without exploitation), etc, the customers are people who are prepared to pay a higher fair price for the product or service, because they want to help a particular group of people, not just go to the cheapest seller. In areas where many people live on a dollar a day, earning a few dollars for 2 or 3 hours of work would be very welcome. There are barriers to the export of physical products, but no barriers to information (in the form of computer files).

The customers and workers may have some sort of existing connection. They may be friends and relatives, members of the same hobby or sport, farmers, the parents of children at a twin school, an aid organization, church, etc. This would help to build and maintain trust.

The work would be unimportant things related to hobbies and interests, not business. The work would be things that the customer requires in 2 to 5 weeks. There would be no short deadlines. The customer and worker would not exchange any personal information (address or phone number). All communication would be via the organization and the internet site. The worker would keep 100% of the money. It is not like exporting goods to European supermarkets, nobody else is taking a percentage of the money.

For the workers, the work would be a spare-time 'second job', so that there is no risk of losing the income from their main job. Each worker only needs to learn how to do one or two things well on a computer, using a photo editor program, word processor, etc. If some of the people can't read or write well, in order to work with text, they could work with other people on photos. The extra income would help their family and allow them to upgrade their computer, Personal Digital Assistant, etc, and have their own internet subscription. After 2 or 3 years, they may have enough experience to get a permanent job which uses computers.

The money to start the organization could come from friends and supporters (local or in another country) or a group of workers who save money together to buy their first computer and a subscription to the internet. It could come from a 'microfinance' scheme, where a group of workers make small loans to start businesses. They may decide to just buy time at an internet cafe, until they have enough money for a computer. The friends and supporters would help them to set up the system and advise on how to do the tasks. After a while, the first group can advise other groups on starting similar organizations.

This scheme may be a way to get out of the situation where:

a) I can't access the internet because I don't have a large income.

b) I don't have a large income because I can't access the internet.

Does anyone know a group that might be interested in starting such a system?

ricardo

England