Joseph graduated high school with Kenya’s Certificate of Secondary Education.

His parents, who work as subsistence farmers upcountry, didn’t have enough money for his school fees, so he relied on help from his two older brothers. Once he finished, he could only find occasional casual work.  None of his friends had regular jobs either.  He learned about DDD from the loan officer of one of our newest partners, Jamii Bora.

Joseph did well on the speed and accuracy test administered by DDD and interviewed with our Social Mission Lead, Ms. Reydon Otonde.  She was impressed with Joseph’s commitment, as well as the passionate support he had from his grandmother. Before Joseph started work at DDD, his grandmother supported the family by selling fruit in the market, but was constantly harassed because she couldn’t afford a trading license.  Then, on April 1^st, Joseph started work at DDD.

One of his first jobs was to help digitize business registration records for the Kenyan city of Kisumu. Based on the work that he and his colleagues have done, these records will now be publicly available online.  Joseph likes the opportunity to interact with his colleagues at DDD and to set goals for himself; the most challenging part of the job for him is to maintain accuracy in all his output.

Joseph says that working at DDD has already changed his life.  He no longer shares his grandmother’s small room but he’s been able to rent an extra room for himself, buy meals for his grandmother and to help pay school fees for his two younger brothers.  Recently he enrolled in the Open Learning Program at Kenyatta University to begin working towards a Bachelor of Commerce degree.

They report that “only five months young in the Kenyan market, US-based non-profit organization, Digital Divide Data (DDD) is living up to its name by bridging the digital divide with the primarily goal of creating jobs for talented youth in developing countries.”

The story quotes DDD Kenya’s Managing Director, Amolo Ng’weno, saying, “I think there’s been a dramatic explosion of creativity, and Kenya is now known as a worldwide centre for ICT innovation. We are a fairly small country, so we can’t win on scale in the international market, but we can win on quality, creativity and innovation. I think we are at the beginning of a great cycle and take off.”

A "Thoughtful" Chenda Chhay

In 2001, at the age of 19, Chenda’s curiosity lead to another transformative moment when she joined a new start-up that offered her a chance to follow her dreams. She was among the first group of data management operators at DDD. Along with her peers, she learned to type quickly and accurately in English to digitize Harvard University’s student newspaper. Her Cambodian managers noticed she was facile with numbers; after a year she was promoted to help with accounting for our growing business. During her 5-year tenure at DDD, Chenda completed a degree in Accounting and Finance, helped DDD to open our office in Battambang, Cambodia, and then traveled to Laos to support the opening of our office in Vientiane.

One of Chenda’s dreams was to become an entrepreneur. So, she wrote her own business plan to offer basic accounting services to NGOs operating in Cambodia. “I was inspired to launch this project because I’ve seen a growing need for local, quality accounting resources”, says Chenda. “The big accounting firms in Cambodia are too costly for local NGOs and businesses.”

Another door opened for Chenda when her plan was recognized–and she had the opportunity to visit Shanghai, China and Paris, France–as a finalist in the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards for Asia. She launched her own accounting services firm, working with clients globally. She learned to market her business and provide services to a range of clients—and also about the challenges of being an independent businesswoman. In 2011she took a position at FAO, the United Nation’s food security program in Cambodia. Chenda was thrilled to go to work for the UN, because as she says, “I want to drive a similar change as DDD.”

The “thoughtful” young woman her parents nurtured has not ceased to value education. She secured an internship at an accounting firm in New York City, to continue to build her skills. Even while she works for the UN, she is pursuing a 2-year advanced certification from the UK-based Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA).

“I am still exploring this beautiful world that we live in,” she says with a smile. “I don’t know where the next few years will lead me – getting an advanced degree from abroad, starting to outsource my accounting work, working to develop my country. All I know is I am committed to what I’m doing now and that I thank god for the people who supported DDD and gave me the chance to follow my dream. I’m proud to be part of DDD’s family.”

Won’t you become part of the DDD family with a donation today?

You can follow Chenda on her blog at: http://chendachhay.wordpress.com

First there was Tong. Tong is all of 25, orphaned at the age of 5 when the Khmer Rouge murdered his parents; he was raised by his older sister who was 7 at the time. Tong was given an opportunity to receive vocational training from an NGO. With respectable English skills, a great personality and training to work in a restaurant you’d think Tong would have no problem finding a good job in a tourist destination like Angkor. I met Tong the day before he was leaving for Phuket, Thailand for work in a resort there. The work in Angkor was seasonal, long hours for poor pay. He spent his entire savings on the bus ticket to Thailand in pursuit of a better life.

Then there was sweet Bun Neang my TukTuk driver. Bun purchased his TukTuk and “moto” (as they call their mopeds) a year ago. Bun is quite tall, especially for a Cambodian (6 foot). His moto ran rough, but steady and was too small for him, but also fit him at the same time. I had one day to see the temples of Angkor so I started early, at 6:30am and went until 5:30pm. I’m like that, but it was only possible thanks to my TukTuk driver and escort, Bun.

At the end of our exhausting day I had some time to kill before he was to take me to the airport. I asked if he could show me one of the small beautiful simple villages I had passed on my way into the city. He offered his home village and I seized the opportunity. 10 minutes later we were riding through a dirty, poor, noisy hovel with pot-holed dirt streets. Not exactly what I had in mind. I spotted the ubiquitous town pagoda and asked if we could go there. Pagodas are the center of where Buddhist monks live and study. Every village I passed had one and they are all over the cities. Somehow I was unsure if they were open to the public, but Bun drove us right into the center of the compound like he owned the place. It was beautiful. It was quiet. He confided that he comes here often, to speak to the monks about things that trouble him.

Just then monks in bright saffron orange sarongs enveloped us as they moved past. The monks were gathering for evening prayer. He encouraged me to follow, so I did. I went right up to the temple and as I approached a beautiful chanting began. The air stilled to listen to their call. They prayed before an enormous golden Buda. I stayed awhile and then Bun and I progressed.

A few blocks away we pulled into a courtyard with a grouping of rundown cement houses on three sides. On the fourth side a group of three beautiful children were playing in a pile of large palm branches and trash. These were Bun’s well-loved children. His wife stood off to the side in front of their home, a one-room tin shack – not even concrete. My throat caught, and then the middle boy was tugging at my shirt. He had a ball so we started kicking it around, running in the dust. A few times I had to pry items from the baby girls grasp she had found in the trash pile, a broken chopstick, a rotting coconut. I taught them a song I sing with my kids, “Slippery Fish” and they sang a Khmer school song for me. By the time I left the kids were hugging me and begging me not to go. I almost didn’t.

These are the people Jeremy and his friends met 10 years ago who inspired them to found DDD. These sweet poor people, with drive and aspirations. These people who need more than training for jobs that don’t exist. They need more than drive and determination. They have families to raise, communities to support, lives to be fulfilled.

Two days earlier I was at our new office in Battambang, a sparkling example of a new promise for Cambodia. In one corner sat 25 new trainees who had just arrived fresh-faced from their 6-months in English training in Phnom Penh. On this side 50 operators were slugging their way through a project that has been plagued with technical difficulties but is finally on track, the team leaders wandering among their colleagues answering questions, making suggestions. Outside sit row after row of sparkling new motos, how envious Bun would be. Nobody in the building is over 24 but they could each afford a new moto on the living wage they receive from DDD. They need them to get from their 6-hour workday to their college classes across down. So industrious! This is the future of Cambodia. This is the bridge of opportunity to the global economy.

At DDD, we strive to bridge the gap between genders by giving women the same opportunities as men. Overall, at least 50% of the operators we accept are young women and half of DDD’s staff and managers are women.

Chaiphet’s exposure to the gender disparities that pervade Laos started at age 12, when her mother divorced her alcoholic husband. Divorce is still stigmatized in Laos, and there is no legal framework in place to guarantee the financial security of a woman who leaves a marriage. After the divorce, Chaiphet’s dismantled family moved in with her uncle, and her mother established a small tailoring business.

Before Chaiphet enrolled in university, her mother managed to negotiate a discounted tuition fee. Even still, it was hard to cover the tuition with her mother’s single income, and Chaiphet had to find work if she wanted to stay in school.

Through a friend, Chaiphet and her sister heard that DDD was looking for data-entry operators. They went to the interview together, where it was explained to them that DDD only accepts one trainee per family, in order to diffuse social impact as much as possible and to avoid nepotism. “My sister gave me this opportunity,” says Chaiphet. “After I joined DDD, my mother was so happy. Now I would have some money to support myself, and DDD would also pay half of my school fee.”

Chaiphet started her career at DDD as a data-entry operator, but was soon promoted — first to Team Leader Assistant, then Team Leader, and most recently to External Relations Assistant. In this role, she manages all logistical travel arrangements for out-of-town staff, board members and visitors and maintains DDD’s relationship with the local business community.

Chaiphet tells me she feels free when she works at DDD: she feels the satisfaction of helping other people, and feels that DDD has always supported her. DDD is like a family to her. But her job not only gives personal satisfaction: “Even if I am late for school… I still get good grades because of my experience from DDD. I think work and study can go together: I can transfer my tasks at DDD to the answers on my school test,” explains Chaiphet, who studies Business Administration.

She aspires to own and manage her own landscaping business, preferably within the next 10 years, but before that it’ll be time to get married. She expects her priorities to change when she has a family of her own: “I like my job at DDD, and I don’t mind to spend a lot of time working — I never set a time to go home, instead I go home when I feel the thing that needs to be done is done. But, when you are married you cannot spend so much time working, you have to do other things, like cooking, taking care of the children, looking after the house, etc.”

She recognizes how being an educated, working woman can be complicated to combine with married life: “I think in Lao culture a man can have good job, and the woman can have a good job. But I don’t think men have the same idea. Men feel they should have a better job than the women.”

Still, Chaiphet is ready to face the world, husband or no husband, once the time comes to graduate from DDD: “I feel confident about getting a job outside [of DDD] now. I would like to run my own landscaping business, because I like trees and flowers. If I get my own business, I will take my family and my mom to visit other countries.”

Your support makes it possible for Chaiphet, and other girls like her, to dream big and realize their goals. Please continue to support our mission by donating here.

A  booming IT outsourcing industry helped spur economic and social growth in India in the 1990s, and it was the idea to bring this model to Cambodia and Laos that originally prompted Jeremy Hockenstein and his co-founders to start DDD. Since then, international clients, such as Harvard Business School, Readers Digest, Daily News, and more, have outsourced their work from the US and Europe to DDD in Southeast Asia.

At the same time, though, we’ve always looked in our own backyard for digitization work. As the markets in Cambodia and Laos develop, we’re excited to see increasing potential for more local clients.

DDD’s services meet a now increasing need for digitization in Southeast Asia. For example, for several years DDD has been digitizing customer registration forms for Mobitel, the largest mobile telecom provider in Cambodia. Before Mobitel engaged DDD, they internally handled the task of entering the handwritten registration forms into a record management system. However, due to a lack of resources and expertise in this area, frequent errors occurred. After outsourcing their digitization work to DDD, Mobitel has been able to archive its records much more accurately while saving costs.

Similarly, we are digitizing records for ANZ Bank, which established offices in Cambodia two years ago and opened in Laos just last year. With regard to this project, Phabphada Dokbouathong, our Senior Project Manager in Vientiane, points out another advantage of engaging with local clients: The business relationships also grows DDD’s network of potential outplacement opportunities for our operators.

According to Eric Wong, our General Manager in Vientiane, DDD could be looking at a lot more local work in Laos: “There’s a huge potential for digitization work in Laos, and it will boom in the next three to five years. Potential work is to be found in the telecommunications sector, the insurance sector, the energy industry and the health sector. Just recently, the biggest hospital in Vientiane advertised for help digitizing patient journals, test results, etc – a job that we are experts at doing.”

As we think about growing our existing offices, and even starting DDD operations in new geographies, one of the factors we study is how much demand there is for our services in the local market. While we still plan to sell work internationally, we’re also excited to continue the trend of increasing the amount of work we deliver closer to our offices.

Please continue your support of DDD’s work in these growing economies — donate now.

When you walk around town, you’ll pass by grand colonial buildings and soon find yourself walking on a dirt road lined with small houses, mainly constructed from bamboo and thatched with palm leaves. As it gets close to sunset, kids kick bamboo balls around in the streets, while dads squat and smoke in front of their houses, and moms get the stoves going. On the riverside, the youth of Battambang vigorously work out to popular pop tunes.

At the same time, you’re just as likely to walk past IT and Communications colleges and glossy facades of international businesses. When I recently visited our office in Battambang, I saw young Cambodians in front of computers in storefront schools and internet cafes again and again – an experience similar to that of our CEO, Jeremy Hockenstein, when he first visited Cambodia. When he came to Siem Reap as a tourist in 2001, Jeremy saw young people learning English and computers, but with nowhere to go to employ their skills.

This experience sparked the idea of Digital Divide Data: a social enterprise that would provide young, disadvantaged people with both employment and the opportunity for college education.

Today in Battambang, there seem to be many more employment opportunities in the IT, banking, and insurance sector — not least the DDD office in Battambang, which employs more than 80 people, and has graduated 50 people on to better paying jobs.

One of them is Kanika, who used to teach in public school, but ended up selling rice in front of her family’s house, because she could earn more doing that than teaching. She finally found her way to DDD and got a job as a data-entry operator. After she finished her accounting major at the university, she graduated from DDD and got a job as an accountant at an import company in Battambang: “I’m very happy I got to work for DDD, because it gave me some real experience,” she explains, “I think I could get a job anywhere after working at DDD.”

It is our vision that, through building human resources, providing employment opportunities, and bringing more IT work to the region, DDD can help Battambang become a place where young people can find and be employed in well-paying jobs in modern industries. We already see this transformation taking place in Phnom Penh, and look forward to bringing the same growth to Battambang—while making sure there’s still room for the bamboo balls and riverside workouts, of course.

“All they have is me”.

She was referring to her family and to the fact that she is their only opportunity for achieving some level of financial security in the future.

Sokunthea grew up in rural Cambodia, close to the Vietnamese border. When she was one year old, her family moved to Battambang. The move was spurred by the military activities close to the Cambodian-Thai border, as her father was in the DN army and had to follow the action.

Sokunthea is the youngest of the family’s eight children, and she was able to attend school longer than any of her siblings: They all left school after 9th grade – a few of them even earlier than that. They have their own families now, and work as farmers or have small businesses, where they sell fruit or textile.

During Sokunthea’s final year of high school, her parents could no longer afford the expenses that come with studying, and it looked like she had to drop out of school. It was due to the grace of one of her older brothers, who worked as a driver and therefore could afford to cover some of the cost, that Sokunthea was able to finish the 12th grade and get her high school diploma.

But after finishing high school, it was clear that Sokunthea needed to find a job and help support herself and the rest of the family. Her friend offered her a job in her phone shop, where she made 5000 riel – the equivalent of $1.25 – a day.

In 2008 Sokunthea heard from a friend that DDD was seeking operators. She passed the admission test, was hired as an operator, and then received the scholarship that allows her to now study accounting at the university. Beyond receiving the scholarship, she also makes a salary at DDD.

“I can’t support my family a lot, but sometimes I can send enough money home to pay the electricity bill. When I can, I do it.”

She tells me that she and everyone in her family were very, very happy, when she was accepted to work at DDD, because they knew it meant she would get the chance to educate herself. An education leads to a better job with a higher salary: it’s a promise of better times to come. Sokunthea explains, “I want to be an accountant – a good one – so that I can support my parents when they get old.”

In a couple of years, when Sokunthea has finished her studies, DDD will help her find another job where she can apply her experience and skills, and where she’ll go on to make approximately four times the average salary in Cambodia.

Naturally, Sokunthea is happy to work at DDD and to attend the university, but she’s also sad and gets upset when telling her story. She is worried about the future: “My father had a heart attack, and I worry about his health every day.” She knows that she is all the family has, and there is no doubt she knows that that is a big responsibility to carry.

Four project managers were already working in that office, three of whom had started at DDD as data-entry operators years earlier. Since it is part of DDD’s mission to develop and empower our staff by continuously providing training and new challenges on the job, the senior management decided to give all of the four existing project managers a chance to sit behind the wheel for a few months, before deciding to either hire internally for the open position or look elsewhere. First up in the rotation was Socheat Keo.

Socheat joined DDD in October 2001, when he was 20 years old, as part of the second batch of operators ever hired by DDD. He grew up in Phnom Penh as the youngest of three sisters and two brothers. His mother was his father’s second wife, a practice that’s not so uncommon in Cambodia, so his father never lived with the family and Socheat’s mother struggled to provide for all of them. When Socheat was in high school, he worked as a waiter at night to help pay for the household expenses.

After coming to DDD, Socheat quickly graduated from data entry operator to take on larger professional roles. As a Team Leader, and later, when he helped open DDD’s second office in Battambang, he worked fulltime while studying at the university in the evening. Eventually, working as a project manager back in Phnom Penh, he came to manage some of DDD’s biggest projects, including quality assurance for the digitization of the Royal Dutch Library’s content. When the Royal Dutch Library finally launched the first section of their digital archive, Socheat was the one who organized a celebration with cake and cheers for the operators in Cambodia, who had worked on the project.

I asked Socheat what he learned from working at DDD. “I learned a lot from DDD…. I didn’t have anything before I joined DDD. Computer, English, all kinds of skills — confidence, and management — all that I learned from DDD.” Even though Socheat says he regards DDD as his family, he can imagine a time and a career after DDD: “I would like to work for an NGO, or a company with a social mission, so I can share my experience and gain new experience.”

About a month after Socheat took on the senior project manager position on a trial basis, senior management got in touch with him again. “They said they’d decided not to rotate the position after all, and that I had their full support,” says Socheat. “I’m happy with my new position, and I’m very happy I also have the support of my colleagues. We all come from the same background, and we’re all good.”

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.