Our Approach
At EqualReach, we’re committed to bridging the next generation of untapped talent from displaced communities with meaningful work opportunities; empowering the private sector to solve real business problems while sourcing impactfully with trust. Our theory of change is rooted in peace through opportunity and we do this with team and project-based online work.
Why Connecting Displaced Talent to Work Matters
The plight of forcibly displaced people—which includes refugees, asylum-seekers, and internally displaced people—is arguably the greatest humanitarian crisis of the 21st century. A decade ago there were 37 million displaced people worldwide, but that number has since skyrocketed to an anticipated 120+ million, over 1% of the world’s population. The UNHCR has found that 78% of all refugees now experience protracted exiles, the global average being over 20 years. Growing numbers of youth who were born in camps are now coming to age and looking for work and purpose. Refugees at a round table discussion with the UNHCR voiced that, “Skilled refugees and refugee entrepreneurs do not need food assistance, but, rather, access to capital, skills training, employment opportunities, and free movement in and out of the refugee camp to conduct business.”
Displaced people represent a virtually untapped labor pool that want to work, but are largely unable to access employment opportunities. 75% of refugees are hosted in communities where local jobs are in short supply, so there are often regional laws prohibiting refugees from working in host communities. According to Oxford professor and Sr. researcher, Alexander Betts, “Even for refugees with a job, the median income is around $1 per day, which without food rations, would leave them below the World Bank’s global poverty line [$1.90 per day].”
This population is also barred from most digital work platforms and payment solutions, because the regions hosting the highest concentration of displaced people are most likely to have prohibited access with blocklists that require private sector partnerships to overcome. 43% of Middle Eastern countries, for example, are on PayPal’s blocklist due to regional uncertainty, prohibiting 183 million people from accessing a world-leading payment solution. Even if displaced talent can independently access work and payment platforms, there are few sustainable avenues to upskill and obtain higher-skill and higher-paying work, and competing in a global digital ecosystem has become far more competitive since COVID-19.
At the same time, rapid global digitization is forcing organizations to adapt and find talent to fill project gaps across a wide range of skills. Do you see where we're going?
Our theory of change is rooted in peace through opportunity.
For example, nearly every enterprise, SMB, startup, NGO, and public organization is working to improve their processes with AI/ML or LLM technology, with new work in this sector expected to add $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030. But approximately 80% of AI project time is spent aggregating, cleaning, labelling, and augmenting data to be used in ML models. This leaves just 20%for activities that drive strategic value: algorithm development, model training and tuning, and ML operationalization. No matter how technologically advanced, there remains a need for human judgement, so a business can maximize its employees' time by leveraging dedicated talent for that non-strategic 80%at the microwork or freelance level.
For displaced talent teams with more advanced digital skills--like web development, graphic design, complex business process operations (BPO), digital marketing, or all the way to embedded full-stack tech teams--EqualReach is positioned as a one-stop-shop to access qualified, vetted teams of talent for projects that require a broad range of skillsets.
