Innovating Against Trafficking: Building Mobile Peer Networks to Prevent Labor Exploitation
LaborVoices, Inc. (LV), is a for-profit company with a social mission: ending labor abuses by enforcing labor market transparency. At LV we believe that all men and women have the right to decent work, work that allows for a healthy and productive life. We envision: a world without human trafficking; a world where workers have access to fair working conditions; a world where everyone can connect with fellow workers, assess their options, and choose decent work.
We achieve that change by removing barriers to information in global supply chains, so workers can avoid abuses, buyers can choose decent workplaces, and consumers can connect with the workers who made their products.
Sobre ti
Sobre ti
Nombre
Kohl S.
Apellido
Gill, Ph.D
URL de Twitter
http://twitter.com/#!/LaborVoices
URL de Facebook
Sobre tu organización
Nombre de la organización
LaborVoices
Sitio web de la organización
País de la organización
Estados Unidos, CA, Santa Clara County
Países en donde este proyecto está creando impacto social
India, KA
Tu organización es
Empresa
¿Cuánto tiempo ha estado operando la organización?
1-5 años
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Innovación
Título del Formulario de Inscripción
Innovating Against Trafficking: Building Mobile Peer Networks to Prevent Labor Exploitation
¿Qué cambios quieres traer al mundo?
LaborVoices, Inc. (LV), is a for-profit company with a social mission: ending labor abuses by enforcing labor market transparency. At LV we believe that all men and women have the right to decent work, work that allows for a healthy and productive life. We envision: a world without human trafficking; a world where workers have access to fair working conditions; a world where everyone can connect with fellow workers, assess their options, and choose decent work.
We achieve that change by removing barriers to information in global supply chains, so workers can avoid abuses, buyers can choose decent workplaces, and consumers can connect with the workers who made their products.
¿Cuáles son las actividades principales de tu proyecto?
LaborVoices (LV) crowdsources worker opinions by connecting mobile workers via an easily scalable and highly replicable voice and SMS platform. We bring transparency to labor networks and provide brands with a real-time supply chain monitoring tool.
LV piloted its innovative mobile technology in September 2010, in Bangalore, India. LV’s model includes partnering with local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) already active in the community and engaged with migrant workers. Using the partner NGO’s trust as the basis of our relationship, we recruit workers to share their opinions and their questions regarding potential work opportunities in different locations. We aggregate the data from workers at a current work site and provide answers to those looking for new opportunities. In this way, LV promotes transparency in labor markets allowing migrant workers to fact-check prospective employers and employment conditions by accessing the LV mobile phone portal. The LV system will allow workers to search and retrieve relevant information through the simplest mobile phones.
We aggregate the data that workers give us into intelligence products that we sell to supply-chain managers, during an embargo period. After our embargo, we publish our data and intelligence, to hold ourselves, and everyone else, accountable.
¿Qué es innovador acerca de tu iniciativa? ¿Cómo es que es un nuevo aporte al campo?
LV, using a globally adaptable technology, introduces an innovative approach to solving socio-economic problems like labor exploitation by helping workers help each other. LV offers fact-checking facilities with valid reputations of employers (LV-M), marketing opportunities to reach the global migrant labor market (LV-A), and labor market intelligence analysis for supply-chain management, risk management, and crisis intervention (LV-CSR). The company offers a unique and superior alternative to competition in each market:
LV-M delivers more, better, and up-to-date information for migrating workers, versus established family-and-friends information networks, while maintaining the confidentiality of their requests.
LV-A provides highly-targeted opportunities to access high-value individuals at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) at the point of making large financial decisions, versus existing mass-media outlets, which do not have the level of information and connection to target communities that LV-A has. Because information is requested by the user and is of major importance to the user, an interstitial advertisement has more per-impression impact than radio audio advertising to the BOP.
LV-CSR delivers inexpensive, accurate, real-time, ubiquitous labor market intelligence to brands and socially-responsible entities, versus the current expensive, cumbersome, and ineffective inspection, verification, and certification processes. The average factory labor rights inspection costs $4-7K, and is out-of-date within weeks. LV-CSR is near-real-time, cheaper and more accurate.
¿En qué fase está el proyecto?
Operando menos de un año
Háblanos de la comunidad con la que estás trabajando, por ejemplo, sus condiciones económicas, las estructuras políticas, normas y valores, las tendencias demográficas, la historia y la experiencia con los esfuerzos de compromiso.
Consider a worker in Bangladesh migrating to a distant factory in Sweden. She hears that the wages are good, suitable living and dining facilities are available, and that a labor broker will arrange for her to travel to Sweden for a large fee. She borrows money from family and lenders, planning to repay debts rapidly, and send surplus money home. In practice, a worker like this often finds that none of these facts are true. She is not delivered to the correct factory, nor to Sweden. She is not paid well, nor on time. Her living and dining facilities are poor or non-existent. Her meager take-home wage doubles the time she will be in debt, with her family’s safety at risk from her creditors. Her documentation is confiscated, holding her in virtual captivity. This worker becomes vulnerable because she must rely on very poor information sources—she doesn’t know whom to trust.
LaborVoices will serve vulnerable migrant workers globally, like the Bangladeshi worker above, with operations tailored to local context and technological capacity, facilitated by local partners. Our initial pilot has been conducted in Bangalore, India, targeting local migrant garment workers. The limiting instrument of our approach is the individual’s access to a mobile phone. Our workers are making less than the minimum wage, and often don't know about their rights, such as wage, hour, and pension protections.
Compartir la historia del fundador y lo que inspiró al fundador para iniciar este proyecto
LaborVoices originated with my deep interest in transparency and accountability. In 2005, I was a volunteer paralegal in Delhi slums, assisting people with their Right to Information applications, helping them fight corruption via access to information that directly impacted them and their families. This experience showed me the power of information, but also the need for it to be more accessible and user-driven.
Upon my return to the United States, I was a Science Policy Fellow with the federal government, which eventually brought me to my most recent position handling international labor affairs for South Asia and the Middle East at the US State Department. While at State I’d started researching the abuse of migrant workers around the world and how to apply new transparency-based approaches to solving the problem. The global scale of the challenge presented a prime market for information services, but this market was going vastly underserved. Most of the people working towards labor justice offered traditional solutions, largely government-aided or top-down; no one was effectively using information directly from the workers themselves. I had already seen the challenges in accessing those individuals, but I also understood that mobile technology in India was pervasive and was being used in innovative ways there and globally. On a trade and labor delegation to Bangladesh, I happened to meet Kamal Qadir, the founder of CellBazaar, just such an innovative organization. At that point, I started to put the pieces together for LaborVoices.
Impacto social
Esta presentación se trata de
Describa cómo tu proyecto ha tenido éxito y la forma en que éste mide.
Since September of 2010, LaborVoices has been running a pilot in Bangalore, India, reaching hundreds of migrant garment workers and iterating on the model to improve its ability to deliver information to workers in an accessible and context-specific manner. The impacts on this group will be measured with a post-pilot survey and rigorous analysis; there are 3 more pilots planned for Tier-1 Indian cities, 1 in Vietnam, and 1 in the US. An identical model in the agriculture sector has already worked effectively in rural areas of India. On the customer front, Nike has signed a LOI to support LV with grants, direct investments and in an advisory role. We have other LOIs in negotiation with social auditor channel partners. Overall, LaborVoices will provide better migration choices, higher wages, and better income-security. In increased wages alone, we project a 30x multiple of revenue to wages, for an annual wage impact of $18B. We will measure wage impacts via: new user surveys; surveys through the LV system; and independent and controlled trials. We will mine system traffic for other metrics.
¿Cuántas personas han sido afectadas por el proyecto?
101-1.000
¿Cuántas personas podrían verse afectadas por el proyecto en los próximos tres años?
Más de 10,000
¿Cómo va a evolucionar tu proyecto durante los próximos tres años?
We will reach 2 million users across India in the first 3 years. Our rough roadmap is as follows:
Y1: Entry into three additional Tier 1 Indian cities (Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad), Vietnam (Hanoi), and one US location (likely San Francisco). Market pilot-level products to initial customers: apparel and footwear brands.
Y2: Entry to the remaining Tier 1 Indian cities (Delhi, Ahmedabad, Surat, Kolkata), Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang), and several US cities. Test different models tailored to specific contexts of each market, based on core learnings from prior pilots. Market beta-level products to initial customers.
Y3: Entry to East Asia, Latin America. Scale local operations to achieving ‘real-time feedback’. Begin widespread marketing of data and analysis products.
Sostenibilidad
¿Qué barreras pueden dificultar el éxito de tu proyecto y cómo piensa resolverlas?
The biggest challenge for this project is the contextualized nature of workers and workplaces involved. Specific implementations will be highly tailored to the local language, legal and regulatory codes, and mobile telephony systems involved. We propose an iterative approach, starting with several pilot models in diverse world regions to maximize the information flow and value for workers. A second stage will include scaling up successful models, and simultaneously initiating data standards for external users. Also, because we use open-source code and work exclusively through local partners, our two largest costs are bandwidth (wireless minutes) and user-recruitment, costs which may prove to be a heavy burden. We expect, however, to negotiate lower bulk rates for bandwidth and to lower recruiting costs by working through local partners, earning our own positive reputation, and encouraging viral spread among workers. Meanwhile, as we grow and profile our user base, their incremental value to advertisers increases, as does our coverage of critical factories of interest to brands.
Cuéntanos sobre tus alianzas.
LaborVoices relies on strong partnerships to impart value to both migrant users and brands. We have two major partnerships for our pilot in Bangalore. We have partnered with Sattva, a consultancy with experience in media, management, and social science to launch and execute the pilot project. We have also partnered with Awaaz De, a mobile voice platform startup whose expertise, open source software and hosting solution we are using for the pilot. We are currently in the midst of talks with several brands and sourcing nonprofits to move towards achieving our first year goals.
Actual presupuesto anual en dólares americanos.
$50,001‐100,000
Explica tu selección.
We’ve been bootstrapping LaborVoices from friends and family investments, in cash and in-kind, since early 2010. We are gathering our first tier of corporate customers, and will likely have significant revenue flows by the end of 2011. However, our business plan requires significant investment to help us reach the scale necessary to provide a valuable service both to our users (workers) and our customers (brands).
¿Cómo se va a fortalecer tu proyecto durante los próximos tres años?
In addition to all that mentioned earlier, during Year 1 our focus will be on building out a strong core team covering operations, technology, monitoring/evaluation, and business strategy, while constantly iterating on our technology and partnership models to find the ‘sweet spot’ that works in the Indian context. During Year 2, we plan on integrating SMS technology and a complete transcription/translation solution for vernacular interfaces, considerably strengthening our project’s ability to record data coming from the users. We will also initiate data-sharing agreements with third-party distributors. During Year 3 we will begin subsidizing randomized control trials to rapidly customize local features, making our project even more evidence based and context-specific.
Desafíos
¿Qué barreras al empleo aborda tu innovación? Por favor, selecciona un máximo de tres por orden de relevancia para el proyecto.
PRIMARIA
Falta de acceso a la información y redes
SECUNDARIA
Insuficiente transparencia
TERCIARIA
Acceso restringido a nuevos mercados
Por favor, describe cómo la innovación específicamente aborda las barreras mencionadas anteriormente.
LaborVoices uses pervasive mobile technology to draw information from workers on abusive employers, encouraging employer responsibility for providing safe work environments. LV provides a mobile technology platform for migrant workers - think of a cross between Yelp and Ask.com - to ask questions over the phone about a destination and receive answers from hundreds of workers currently on-site. LV gathers these questions and answers to generate reliable reputations of employers and worksites. This data is transparent, encouraging employers to improve conditions for better ratings; it’s also anonymous, ensuring that workers who report abuses are safe from employer reprisal. No smartphones are necessary - simply a normal cellphone capable of sending and receiving calls.
¿Cómo estás haciendo crecer el impacto de tu organización o iniciativa?
Por favor, selecciona un máximo de tres maneras posibles en orden de relevancia para ti.
Primary
Aprovechar la tecnología
SECUNDARIA
Hacer crecer el alcance geográfico: Mundial
TERCIARIA
Mejorar el impacto actual a través de la adición de servicios complementarios
Por favor, describe cuál de las actividades para crecer están en curso o previstas para el futuro inmediato.
We are working to prove the model, which requires success in various geographic locations and successfully leveraged technology in each context. Thus, we are planning for growth in both those areas. Fortunately, the mobile voice technology that LV uses is globally adaptable, and the infrastructure to expand to SMS and the online market already exists. Our operations are light-weight, focusing only on those areas where we have strong local partners and mobile phone infrastructure. As we expand into areas with higher literacy rates and languages that render easily on mobile phones, we are building text messaging (SMS) modes of interaction. Similarly, we envision eventually moving up-market to provide portals to users with web and web-enabled-phone access.
Colaboras con algunos de los siguientes organismos: (Indica todos los que corrrespondan)
Proveedores de tecnología, ONGs/organizaciones sin fines de lucro, Empresas.
De ser así, ¿estas colaboraciones han ayudado a que tu innovación tenga éxito?
We’re collaborating with technology for-profit companies to host our solution in India and elsewhere. Our corporate partners have given us access to supply-chain information and guidance on industry trends. Our non-profit partners have helped us gain access to workers in a safe manner, with a sense of trust. These collaborations are critical to the success of LaborVoices, and each partner is invested in achieving our mission.
 | 96 weeks ago Kohl S. Gill, Ph.D said: Thanks, Swapnil, for your kind remarks. Thanks also, PhongThao, for your response and questions. Let me take them in order. - ... about this Competition Entry. - leer más > |
| 96 weeks ago Swapnil Chaturvedi said: I am very inspired by Kohl’s personal story and by what Labor Voices is trying to do. I believe that Labor Voices can empower millions ... about this Competition Entry. - leer más > |
| 96 weeks ago PhuongThao Le said: I think LaborVoices definitely offers a great solution to counter the lack of information or misinformation in the emerging labor ... about this Competition Entry. - leer más > |
| 101 weeks ago Kohl S. Gill, Ph.D updated this Competition Entry. |
| 101 weeks ago Kohl S. Gill, Ph.D submitted this idea. |