Hi LessWrong,
Two years ago, when I travelled to Belize, I came up with an idea for a self-sufficient scalable program to address poverty. I saw how many people in Belize were unemployed or getting paid very low wages, but I also saw how skilled they were, a result of English being the national language and a mandatory education system. Many Belizeans have a secondary/high school education in Belize, and the vast majority have at least a primary school education and can speak English. I thought to myself, "it's too bad I can't teleport Belizeans to the United States, because in the U.S., they would automatically be able to earn many times more the minimum wage in Belize with their existing skills."
But I knew there was a way to do it: "virtual teleportation." My solution involves using computer and internet access in conjunction with training and support to connect the poor with high paying international work opportunities. My tests of virtual employment using Upwork and Amazon Mechanical Turk show that it is possible to earn at least twice the minimum wage in Belize, around $3 an hour, working with flexible hours. This solution is scalable because there is a consistent international demand for very low wage work (relatively speaking) from competent English speakers, and in other countries around the world like South Africa, many people matching that description can be found and lifted out of poverty. The solution could become self-sufficient because running a virtual employment enterprise or taking a cut of the earnings of members using virtual employment services (as bad as that sounds) can generate enough income to pay for the relatively low costs of monthly internet and the one-time costs of technology upgrades.
If you have any feedback, comments, suggestions, I would love to hear about it in the comments section. Feedback on my fundraising campaign at igg.me/at/bvep is also greatly appreciated.
If you are thinking about supporting the idea, my team and I need your help to make this possible. It may be difficult for us to reach our goal, but every contribution greatly increases the chances our fundraiser and our program will be successful, especially in the early stages. All donations are tax-deductible, and if you’d like, you can also opt-in for perks like flash drives and t-shirts. It only takes a moment to make a great difference: igg.me/at/bvep.
Thank you for reading!
Thank you for your suggestions. I have in fact surveyed people and organizations in Belize. The general consensus is that there are a lot of people who are unemployed or working for very low wages, and getting higher paying employment would improve their standard of living. You mentioned a small scale pilot, we have actually run many such pilots, which is how we found that it would be possible to help people earn around $3 USD an hour. We are currently working on remote testing of our program before actually sending staff to Belize.