Business process outsourcing company Digital Divide Data has won a global award for its social enterprise business model that focuses on employing youths from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Global Sourcing Council (GSC) named DDD the winner of its 3S (Sustainable and Socially responsible Sourcing) People’s Choice Award for 2012 at a ceremony held in New York City recently. The GSC 3S Awards, established in 2008, honour best “green,” sustainable and socially responsible practices in global sourcing.
It is the only awards programme geared towards the global sourcing sector and recognises both sustainable and socially responsible business practices. The GSC 3S Awards promote impact sourcing (IS), which encourages businesses and organisations the opportunity to do business well and have a positive impact on the communities that they do business with. Digital Divide Data promotes the lives of disadvantaged youth in developing countries through employment in its business process outsourcing (BPO) centres.
Mr Jeremy Hockenstein, DDD’s CEO, who is based in New York, said the recognition would inspire others to use the impact-sourcing model to build bridges to opportunities in the global economy for hundreds of thousands of young people.
“For a young person born in poverty, a first job and the opportunity to go to college means the chance to break a heinous cycle and create a better future for themselves, their siblings and their own children,” said Michael Chertok, Co-founder and Chief Development Officer at Digital Divide Data. In Kenya, Digital Divide Data employs youth from Mathare and Kibera slums, who work in its Nairobi-based BPO offices in various capacities, including clerks and digital data operators. So far it has employed over 150 and targets 300 in the next two years.
“DDD is proud to be a leading BPO company in Kenya,” Managing Director Amolo Ng’weno said last week, “and we see the impact every day on the lives of the young people we hire and train to do this kind of work.” The company offers various services in digital marketing, document digitisation, social market & research, process automation and real-time digitisation.
The 2012 winners will participate in the 3S Awards Boot Camp in New York City, where they will be coached by executives from global corporations. Two representatives of Digital Divide Data will participate in the prestigious Vested Outsourcing Course at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville’s Center for Executive Education next year.
“It takes a village of like-minded individuals to grow and scale the socially responsible enterprise that produces profit with purpose,” said Dr. Wanda Lopuch, chair of 3S Awards. “Our goal is to provide the winners of 3S Awards with skills and contacts that will empower them to take their winning programmes to the next level.”
The Global Sourcing Council is an association of businesses, government institutions and academia, dedicated to promoting sustainable global development and socially responsible sourcing. Other awards categories for the are Community Engagement Award, Employee Engagement Award, Empowered Woman Award, Out-of the Box Award and the People’s choice Award.
