Programs under Discussion
Microinvest
We have seen many ‘micro’ revolutions – microcredit, microsaving, microfinance, microproject, and microwork – all attempting to solve the problem facing the poor around the world. The idea of microinvest is an offshoot of all these early innovations. The concept is that it will mobilize funds through micro-investors around the world which will be used to run small and medium-size enterprises in the developing world and, unlike present time donors, the investors will receive the return on their investment. The objective of this program is to find out the projects which will provide a reasonable return for the investors on one hand and create jobs for local communities on the other.
Shop Green Products (SGP)
This project envisions creating a social business that will be engaged in both retail and wholesale businesses of buying environment-friendly goods from developing countries and selling them in developed world. The objective of this project is to leave social impact in poor countries through job creation for extra-marginalized families and help them earn a living wage. Such businesses will facilitate small enterprises operating in developing countries to gain market access in developed countries with a condition that the businesses will employ individuals from low-income families to raise their living standard. The green goods to be marketed will include handicrafts, agricultural products, jewelry, wood and stone-made sculptures, to name a few, the production of which do not leave adverse effect in the environment.
Jobs are Created by Innovation (JaCbI)
Each job we see today is a result of some sort of innovation that took place in the past. Going back to hunting age, the innovation of hunting tools must have created many jobs for the contemporary society. The subsequent invention of agriculture engaged too many people, hundreds of millions even today, who would have been otherwise surviving in very difficult task of hunting before the invention of agriculture. Now we see automobile industry with lots of jobs embedded in it which wouldn’t have been possible unless automobile had been invented. We can cite so many examples, such as the invention of money, banks, railways, computers, telephone, planes, computer games and so on so forth, which have engaged hundreds of millions of people around the world in some profession. We believe that there must be some unrevealed mysteries inherent to the local conditions that have potential to create jobs in deprived communities. Community forestry serves as one of the best examples as to how this invention created so many jobs for poor families around the world along with safeguarding the environment at the same time. This project aims at revealing those mysteries.
Global Job Information System (GJIS)
This project will map the planet earth in terms of people’s engagement in different types of job, the way the jobs have been created, regional labor shortage and surplus, distribution of skilled and unskilled workforce, workers’ mobility around the world, and most importantly, the job creation potentiality in different regions based on the resources available in those regions. The planet earth is characterized by an uneven distribution of natural resources, population density, skilled (or unskilled) manpower, productivity, industrialization, technology, environmental degradation, and so on so forth and these criteria have accordingly led to the division of the planet in terms of people’s engagement in some profession and their employability conditions. The increased globalization is constantly changing this global landscape. This mandates for looking into dynamics of job creation (or destruction) process in a global context with due consideration in resources distribution in the world. In delineating the planet in terms of different labor market situations, the project will employ state-of-the-art technologies such as Google Earth, social networking sites, and global database on job-related indicators.
Vibrating an Economy by Creating Economic Velocity Points
When we take a look at a small town in a developing country and compare this with similar-sized town in a developed country, we observe that the former is relatively dormant and the latter is more vibrant in terms of economic activities taking place. In vibrant town, people have many options to spend their income such as in restaurants, movie theatres, parties, recreations, and others. But in dormant town, there are only a limited number of activities that people can spend their income, such as in a grocery store or in a barber shop. In vibrant town, people earn wage-income working with abundantly available businesses in the town and spent the income (or part of the income) back again in the town for other activities. In this process, money moves from one hand to another faster by creating wealth in every step of the way. On the other hand, the dormant town does not have many such points for money to travel around and thus the total wealth is less than it is in more vibrant town. The vibrant town has potential to create many jobs on each velocity point whereas it is not available in dormant town leaving the town with mass unemployment. Based on this analogy, it can be concluded that the more the velocity points in an economy for money to travel around, the more the economy is economically vibrant and prosperous. This project identifies such velocity points that have potential to create many jobs in inactive economies.