The wheels of the tuk-tuk spit gravel behind us as we jostled over unpaved roads. I’ve spent a lot of time in Phnom Penh but I’d never been out here in the far reaches of the city. To get there, we drove thirty minutes out of town, then down a long dirt road to a small community loosely congregated around a wat.

Behind the wat and attached school, we turned into a small labyrinth of unpaved roads, fingers of land jutting around a pond. Small houses, in varying states of construction, lined the roads. Children playing on mounds of gravel shrieked and waved at us, while grandmothers crouched in front of their houses just watched, bemused. I was with a staff member from one of our supporting foundations, my colleague Michael from San Francisco, and Socheat, DDD’s Phnom Penh Training Coordinator and our chaperone for the afternoon.

The tuk-tuk stopped and Socheat led us to the last home, where the road dead-ended. There was a scramble of activity in the neighboring homes as a family of six assembled to greet us.

Piseth*, a DDD operator, stepped forward and introduced himself in soft, serious English. He presented each member of his family—his mother, father, two younger sisters and younger brother. We smiled and clasped our hands together and nodded our heads. Piseth translated that his parents were honored we were there. His mother motioned for us to come in.

The family home was small, with one main, empty room. A chicken clucked in a corner, and a couple of dogs roamed freely. We could see right down the home’s only hallway, which seemed to spill into the pond behind it. The house was constructed of bricks in a raw red with fresh mortar pasting them together. An upper floor was half-built. There was no furniture or evidence of electricity, except for a large computer monitor, carefully wired up in the corner.

Mats were laid on the concrete floor for us to sit, while Piseth and his family crouched against the wall across from us. His mother shyly pushed a tray of bottled water toward us. I cringed, hoping this didn’t cost them too much but afraid to refuse the careful hospitality. With a language barrier between us and unsure of how to start, we all smiled at each other.

The point of our visit was just this—to absorb the place where we were and the people we were with. As management at DDD, we have all been drawn to our work by the promise of having an impact, but we often find ourselves far removed from it. These visits to DDD’s data operators’ homes jerked us back to the reality of our staff in Cambodia and Laos, reminding us of what life was like here—in this case, how hard it could be but how much better it could get.

Piseth spoke quietly, but looked us straight in the eyes. He didn’t smile, but wasn’t mad or sad—instead, it seemed he took himself very seriously because he had to. He explained that he is the main breadwinner for his family. His parents are street food vendors, and his younger sisters and brother are in school. Piseth wakes up before 5am to bike to work at DDD until lunchtime, and then helps his parents for the rest of the day so that his younger siblings can stay in school. (He insists on it.)

By night, he and his father slowly build their house. The family had been living in a squatters’ community in another corner of town, but were kicked out to make way for new development there. With their small compensatory stipend, Piseth and his family acquired the land and materials for the house. They finished building the structure, but are now out of money, so the rest—the bedrooms upstairs, the kitchen—has to wait until they could save more.

Between his work at DDD and helping his family, Piseth had to drop out of university even though he had a DDD scholarship to support his tuition. Socheat prodded him gently and Piseth answered wistfully that he hopes to go back once the house was finished.

After an hour of listening and asking questions, and then another few minutes of nodding thanks and goodbyes, we unfurled ourselves from the concrete floor, dodged the dogs and chicken, and stepped back out into the blaze of the midday sun. Piseth walked us down the road as we picked our way around construction refuse and back toward the tuk-tuk. We were quiet on the ride back, sweaty and humbled.

·                            ·                             ·

Now back in San Francisco, it’s still easy to lose myself in Powerpoints and grant proposals. On a daily basis, it’s much easier to talk about metrics than it is to remember that right now, across the globe, Piseth is coming home from his second job and facing a to-do list much less manageable. But every time I do, his resoluteness hits me with a thud. I can’t reach for a brick and I can’t feed the chickens and I can’t hawk another bamboo tube of rice to help. But I can, and I do, attack my inbox with renewed determination, make this proposal a little bit tighter, push a little bit further.

*Employee’s name changed to protect his privacy.

When DDD opened its office in Vientiane, Laos in 2003, Metta and Phab were two of the first ten data entry operators who hired in the office. Now, seven years later, DDD in Vientiane hires 40 new operators every six months. Metta is the Finance Coordinator for the office and Phab is our Senior Project Manager.

Today, when a new employee starts as a data entry operator in DDD’s Vientiane office, they first go through three months of training, learning IT, typing, English, and other necessary skills. When Metta and Phab started as operators they had just one month to meet the typing standard: 30 words per minute. On their first day, Metta typed 11 words a minute; Phab typed eight. “We had to practice, practice, practice – six hours a day, six days a week. Just typing.”

Phab had graduated from college with a degree in management, but it was impossible for her to find a job, because she had no experience. Then she saw in the newspaper that DDD was looking for people who knew some technology and English. The ad also said that DDD encouraged disabled people to apply. Phab misunderstood: “I thought I was going to work with disabled people, not technology. If I had known that, I probably wouldn’t have applied.”

Metta had studied English at the Vocational School for disabled people before she came to DDD. She was looking for a job but was turned away everywhere she applied, because she has a physical disability. “When I saw DDD’s ad in the newspaper and it advertised for disabled people I thought: finally I meet one of the requirements!” She met with the then General Manager in Vientiane, Mai Siriphongpanh (now DDD’s COO), who encouraged Metta to apply.

Metta and Phab excelled in their first few years as operators and joined the capacity building team to train new operators. “People used to call us a lot at night to ask questions and learn more. They are poor and disabled people, but still they really want to learn. It made me proud of them,” Phab says.

To Metta and Phab, DDD is different from other work places: At DDD, you are given opportunity to grow; even if you don’t have the right skills yet, you will be trained in preparation for more advanced positions. They both experienced that, as they ascended within the organization and eventually became managers. “We help people to grow–not just their skills, but we also educate their mind and their interpersonal skills,” says Metta.

When asked why they are still at DDD, they answer in total agreement: “We want to give the next generation the same opportunity that DDD gave us. That is the reason we are still here. We still work with happiness because of our people.”

It seems fitting that it was on the beginning of Vassa, yesterday, that Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, was found guilty of war crimes. He was the head of the infamous Security Prison 21 in Phnom Penh, where an estimated 17,000 people were imprisoned from 1975 to 1979, very few of whom made it out of the prison alive.

I asked Sopheap, General Manager of our Battambang office in Cambodia, what she thinks the sentence means to Cambodia?

“I was glad when this conviction was announced. I was born three years after the Khmer Rouge ended. I still cannot imagine what life looked like in those three years, eight months, and 20 days.”

Still, Sopheap raises the question whether the Khmer Rouge trial was worth the expenses: “I know that millions of dollars have been spent on the court for years. I wonder how different Cambodia would look, if that money was spend in the right development areas, such as education, health care, etc. I think Cambodians think differently about this matter, maybe some of them feel it is the right decision to have this Khmer Rouge tribunal, but many think the people who are found guilty are more guilty than it is publicly published, and many people ask why we have to spend so much money to find him guilty and take so long — when the KR leadership was so obvious.”

In this way, the verdict over Duch was long awaited in Cambodia, and thousands watched live on TV as the sentence was announced. The end of the trial is also the end of an era – a chance for Cambodians to put the genocide behind them and move on, with renewed determination to build a strong and peaceful future for their country.

The event opened with the George Bernard Shaw quote that inspired the institute’s moniker: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable persists in adapting the world to himself.  Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man [and woman].” The social entrepreneurs who presented were young, impassioned, and confident they could make a difference. After spending weeks at the Unreasonable Institute in Boulder, CO to refine their models and write business plans, they came to San Francisco to solicit funding for their ventures. The issues they zoomed in on and the approaches they chose were drastically different, but a common energy threaded through all of the presentations.

As I listened to one pitch after another, my initial sense of being overwhelmed bloomed into a feeling of comfort–empowerment, even. It’s always a  relief to be reminded that I am just one tiny piece of this huge, motley army of people fighting to do something good, each chipping away at poverty or injustice from their own angle with their own weapon. Listening to the Unreasonable Fellows testified to the value of this community–though scrambling for capital from funders and validation from beneficiaries, they seem to have been most shaped by another audience: each other.

As social entrepreneurs, doing what we do often requires a tunnel-visioned focus on our own goals, and a single-minded devotion to our specific work–sometimes I feel like I don’t have the mental space to care about multiple sets of causes. That’s when it’s most valuable to look up and find camaraderie in the community sprung from all of these singular devotions. Whether in the snatches of conversation that float to my desk in Mission*Social, at the pitchfest or a similar social entrepreneurship event at the Hub, or in the orbit of blogs centered around development and social innovation, it’s always energizing to be reminded of the ways in which other people have decided to care and commit unreasonably.

The factory is billed here as a “high-minded experiment”, a project of passion for one socially minded company.  Though paying higher wages means their costs are higher than their competitors’, Knights says it will not ask its customers to pay more. Instead, the company absorbs the added expense and loses some profit on each shirt. But Knights’ prices are still high, in line with more premium brands like Nike and Adidas–the company says this is warranted by their high-quality processes and materials. In order to gain an edge amongst these major players, it will be critical to make their message of impact compelling to consumers.

For us, this points to a question we get often: are our clients willing to pay more or be “easy” on us because we’re an impact-driven nonprofit? The short answer is no. The longer answer is that we would never ask them to–we believe that a large part of our impact comes from bringing the rigor and meritocratic culture of the international marketplace to Cambodia and Laos, emerging markets that are only now learning how to compete on a global stage. Sustainability is one of our core principles, and if our pricing, quality and services are not competitive in the market, we are not sustainable as a business or as an agent of change.

We’re proud that we are able to be a competitive leader in the digitization industry, delivering high-quality services at a competitive price, while also having a social impact–and it’s our hope that our clients feel that pride, too.

It’s 5:30 AM… why am I doing this? I ask myself this question every day on my way to work. So often I wonder if I made the right decision taking this job 8,000 miles from home. Sure, my work involves my passion,–soccer, or “tae bahn” as it is known here–and sure, I interact with wonderfully pleasant Laotians who enrich my life in countless ways, but getting up before 5am every day sometimes seem like a sacrifice that outweighs every possible redeeming factor.

But this isn’t a blog post about DDD, my primary work—no, I’m talking about the second job I’ve taken on, as a player in Laos’s top professional soccer league on the Lao-American College team.

I know it is a cliché, but the life of a professional soccer player isn’t as easy as it seems. Yes, you do get to live like a rock star — audacious parties, attractive women, lucrative contracts and modeling cameos are all mainstays of the average professional soccer player’s life. The Lao football (soccer) league is just like this but…less. For example, Cristiano Ronaldo of Real Madrid probably takes his weekly 300,000 USD salary to the hottest club in Madrid to buy champagne for everyone in the bar whereas I, moments after putting pen to paper on my $50 a month contract, headed to a bar where my coaches drank Beer Lao and sang karaoke to Thai songs.

Still, I decided to dedicate myself to my burgeoning professional soccer career—after all, Laos is probably the only place in the world with a soccer league whose teams are enough in need to seek my employ. For this reason, I resigned myself to waking up in the wee hours of the A.M. to run concentric circles around the parking lot of Laos’ main Buddhist Monastery, the That Luang. I tried to explain to my coach that no amount of Buddhist meditation would save my meniscus and knee ligaments from the pounding on the unforgiving surface, but my Lao is a “work in progress”, and I am as likely to have prophesied a zombie apocalypse as to have informed him of my swollen knees.

But after hours of sleep lost, miles of circles run and cases of Beerlao consumed, what did my dedication earn me? A swift kick in the tuckus and assistance in finding the door. Lao American College discontinued my services with the arrival of four Nigerians. League rules mandate that only four foreigners may play on each team… I was unlucky number 5.

However, I was determined to continue my career. So which team would I sign for now? Would it be MCTPC, team of Lao National superstar Lumnao Sinto? Or would it be for the perennial powerhouse that is Army FC? No… it was for Lao Football League cellar dwellers City Copy Center, the Vientiane version of a Kinko’s sponsored soccer team.

Eventually, the inevitable match between my old team, Lao American College, and my new team, the vaunted City Copy Center, took place. Surely I would make it clear to them that they had made a serious mistake when they terminated my contract. I would vindicate myself. My triumphant return would prove to all of South East Asia that Americans CAN play footy. But instead…I helped my team dribble our way to a trouncing 6-1 loss. Maybe I should stick to digitization.

When I first walked through the doors of Digital Divide Data’s office in Vientiane I found myself in what looks like any other bustling IT business. Computers line the walls and the operations floor is full of young computer technicians working away on data entry projects and digitization of books and newspapers, while managers are meeting about estimates and quality evaluation. But I know that what sets DDD aside from the thousands of other IT outsourcing companies in Asia is the organization’s social mission.

DDD employs disadvantaged youth in Cambodia and Laos, providing them with education, training, and real on-the-job work experience, so that they, after four years, are able to hold better jobs and provide for themselves and their families. While DDD in Cambodia partners with a French NGO for the work of identifying and recruiting the students who are most in need as well as qualified, DDD in Laos handles the recruitment of new employees without help from third parties.

When a new student applies for employment with DDD they are enrolled in a careful selection process where one of the key steps is an unannounced visit to their family home. Thongkham Soumaloun, DDD’s Training Coordinator, and I are on our way to our first family visit of the day when the tire blows up. Thongkham tells me that for this round of recruitment he interviewed more than 60 young Laotians and he aims to hire just under 40. Today, we are visiting five families; the first one is the family of a 23 year-old girl named Noy.

Once the tire is repaired we continue for another 45 minutes before we end up in a small village. All the houses in the village are on stilts, mostly built from bamboo and wood. There are no road signs or house numbers, so the only way to find the right house is to ask around. Not long after we arrive in the village the girl’s mother shows up to greet us. She has already heard of our arrival.

We sit down at a table downstairs, shaded by a few trees and Thongkham pulls out the evaluation form. Do you own or rent your house? Rent. Do you own or rent your land? Rent. Average annual income? $700 USD. I go inside the house to take a few pictures for documentation. Key furniture? None.

We also ask if the girl has any siblings and if they are in school. It turns out that the student’s brother is already employed at DDD in Laos. This is a key piece of information since it is part of DDD’s selection criteria to only accept students from families where other immediate family members are not already employed by DDD. Because her brother is already employed by DDD she doesn’t qualify.

We finish the questionnaire and ask for directions to the next house. It is another long ride on dirt roads. We get on the motorbike and set off and I yell to Thongkham over the noise from the engine and wind: “It’s too bad, they could really use some help”, and he responds: “But her brother is already making a salary and sending money home to his family. There are other families who are not as lucky.” He is right, and we continue on to the next visit.

Correction: Chhavy’s father did not serve as an officer in the army under the Khmer Rouge. During that time he worked as a peasant, and after the fall of the Khmer Rouge he joined the Cambodian People’s Armed Forces (CPARF). The CPARF were the armed forces of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, established primarily in response to the security threat that the CGKD forces, including the Khmer Rouge, presented.

***

Like most of our employees in Cambodia, Chhavy is a daughter of the post-genocide era in Phnom Penh. She graduated from DDD earlier this year and now works to improve the future of some of Cambodia’s least fortunate children, and she dreams about starting her own business.

Chhon Chhavy was born in 1981, two years after the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia had fallen. She was the first of five children. Her parents lived in Kandal province and, like most other Cambodian families, they suffered under the Khmer Rouge, but they survived and avoided being split up or separated into different work camps.

After the Khmer Rouge years, Chhavy’s father joined the Cambodian People’s Armed Forces (CPARF). “When I was a child, I didn’t know about my father’s job. When you are a child, you don’t understand about those things. I would just always be happy to see him when he came back after being away for so long.” says Chhavy. As an adult, she has asked her father about life during the Khmer Rouge and the following decades. He says it was a difficult time and that he never wants General Pol Pot to come back. “No one in Cambodia wants that time to come back.”

Chhavy worked for DDD as a data-entry operator for five years and just recently graduated to a job outside DDD. She now works as a librarian at Hagar International, an NGO that rehabilitates female victims of trafficking in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. She notes that although her daily work is very different, DDD and Hagar International are similar organizations: They are both helping marginalized Cambodians to build better lives.

At Hagar, more than one hundred children use the library and attend the impromptu English and IT classes Chhavy teaches. She says her new job is gratifying because she can help point the children in the direction of a better future. “I didn’t know about this problem in Cambodia before I came to Hagar. Sometimes the parents sell their daughters because they are so poor. I want Cambodia to get rid of this problem.”

Chhavy also has entrepreneurial dreams: She wants to use her experience from DDD to make money so that she can start a small business with her brother.

Thanks in part to Chhavy’s financial support; all of her siblings have been able to study in university. Her brother has become a veterinarian. “In my province, everyone has animals everywhere that are not taken properly care of. When the animals die, the farmers sell the meat in the market and people get sick. I want to provide medicine for the animals, so that people don’t get sick.” explains Chhavy. Right now she is gaining work experience at Hagar and talking to people who have their own businesses so that she can learn from them, before she moves on to realize her dream for herself and her family.

“I think my parents are good parents. They made sure all their children got an education so that we can get good jobs. I want all the children in my country to be able to get an education. And I want peace in Cambodia.”

In 2008, the State of Oregon opened a waiting list for enrollment in the Oregon Health Plan, Oregon’s public health insurance program for low-income adults. Over 85,000 people put their names on the list – many more than the state could afford to insure at the time. In these circumstances, the state decided that the fairest procedure was a random one: 35,000 individuals were randomly selected from the list to receive applications for the health plan.

Several researchers around the country, including Amy Finkelstein (MIT), Katherine Baicker (Harvard School of Public Health), and Bill Wright (Providence Health & Services in Portland, OR) realized that Oregon’s random selection procedure could serve as the basis for a randomized, controlled study of the effects of health insurance on a variety of outcomes –- health, access to healthcare, financial status, etc. Randomized, controlled experiments are considered the “gold standard” in medicine and the physical sciences, but are generally difficult to arrange in the social sciences. The events in Oregon were an unprecedented chance to apply these rigorous methods to the study of health insurance.

Read more about how DDD helped these researchers process close to 70,000 surveys.

Everyone involved was so thrilled with the success of the project that we threw an international, virtual party to celebrate, with our team in Cambodia, and CCS in Germany and Romania. When the project is completed, eight million pages of historical newspapers will have been converted from dusty hard copies in storage to searchable and accessible articles online.

Our European Sales Team Representative Ed McLean gave some perspective on our historical newspapers projects: “Digitized papers once buried deep in paper archives reveal incredible things – this process opens them up to be discovered not just today but also in many years’, decades’ or centuries’ time. It is a window into how we used to live.”

Learn more about DDD’s newspaper digitization services.