Leila Janah is a 35 year old social Entrepreneur and philantrop.
She is the founder of Samasource, a social enterprise that helps people to get out of poverty themselves, and LXMI, a social impact luxury brand.
Leila Janah is not only hugely successful, but also directly changes the world with her humanitarian programs. She is also an very strong character with an interesting background.
I heard about Leila and her programs through YouTube, because I watched theO "Impact Theory" Interview below.
In this video, Leila talks about her upbringing, building character, becoming successful and ultimately changing lives.
Leila's inspiring Biography
Leila is the child of Indian immigrants and part of the family's first generation born in the US.
Her parents entered the US with almost nothing - and since some of their academic degrees from India weren't even accepted there, they had to work their way up.
In the Interview, Leila talked about her childhood, and how her upbringing influenced her and taught her to never give up.
Growing up, Leila's family didn't have a lot of financial support.
She started working several jobs as a young teenager, and found her passion in academics.
She focused all her energy on her school work, and got accepted into Harvard University.
Because her family couldn't afford the tuition, she started working more and more side jobs - even cleaning toilets.
Besides her academic ambitions, Leila has always been very passionate about humanitarian aid.
At the age of 17, she won a 6-month scholarship to visit Ghana and teach students there English.
Upon graduating Harvard in 2005 with a degree in African Development Studies, Leila had visited Africa several times to support humanitarian causes.
In an Interview, she mentioned that helping others was something she's always been passionate about - maybe because helping people who had it worse made it easier for her to get through her own hardships.
Samasource
3 years after graduating College, Leila had founded several humanitarian projects with other scholars, as well as started her first management job.
She then went on to found Samasource, a not-for-profit business to help people lift themselves out of poverty.
The project was inspired by her time spent in Africa and at a call center in Mumbai.
Leila had experienced first-hand how hard these people were working, and yet they could barely survive.
Samasource makes use of microwork - complex digital projects are being broken down into smaller, easily learnable tasks that workers can complete at delivery centers.
Over the course of 4 years, Samasource workers are able to increase their income by 3.7x, and the project has impacted the lives of 35,000 people in total.
Samasource has been named one of Fast Company's "Most Innovative Companies" and counts Walmart, Google and eBay among its clients.
LXMI
LXMI is a for profit luxury skincare brand that manages to enable fair work by satisfying the market demand for luxury beauty products.
LXMI unites undiscovered, effective natural ingredients with transparent, responsible production and sourcing practices. Above all, we exist to engage women to take part in the world in a way that creates lasting beauty.
Leila founded LXMI in 2015, and named the brand after the Hindu goddess of beauty and prosperity, "Laxmi".
The company employs women in the rural villages around the Nile river in Africa, where they harvest the LXMI ingredients. Reports show that these women earn 3x the average local wages through their fair work.
Our primary ingredient harvests enable our producers to earn at least 3x local wages.
We've built our supply chain carefully via non-profit collectives. We believe that fair-wage, dignified work elevates our end product, creating a higher level of luxury for discerning consumers
# Give Work
Charity is not the answer - work is.
#GiveWork is not only the title of Leila Janah's book, it is also a slogan that she has created for her humanitarian projects.
It implies that the ultimate weapon to fight poverty is to give work - not just aid.
Leila shows that providing people with fair jobs that offer far more than the local wages is the best way to help people out of poverty long-term.
Giving dignified microwork is one of the most effective ways to fight extreme poverty, and this is what she explains in the inspiring book.
It's amazing to see how actively and passionately Leila is making the world a better place!
© Sirwinchester
what an amazing movement and such a huge impact it will have on communities and just the way people start treating each other.
Totally. She is 35 years old and has already improved the lives of 35,000 people with these projects!
wow so nice work!
Yes, very inspiring work!
wow what such amazing woman, great story, very good job, thanks for sharing, @sirwinchester have a nice and succesfuly week, cheers!
Thank you very much, glad you enjoyed the story. Have a great week as well!
It's great to see someone making such and impact around the globe!
Everybody wants to be entrepreneur but nobody has enough courage in their hearts.
I will definitely read more about Leila's awesome work. Thank you for this well written post.
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When one is open to the energetic flow, the inspiration comes. Thank you so very much @sirwinchester for sharing this story and your light with us all.
Onwards and upwards!
Upvoted and resteemed.
Thanks for posting this great story... @sirwinchester
Interesting post! I had little idea about Janal's background prior reading. I have to be honest though- despite her success, her project does make me feel a bit uncomfortable. I was going to write about this in the comments originally, but then it all got a bit long so I ended up turning into into a post instead: https://steemit.com/world/@annielennon/disguising-jobs-we-don-t-want-as-foreign-aid-won-t-end-poverty
Would really appreciate your thoughts on it @sirwinchester :)