B.O.T - Social Impact platform
There are 64% of underemployed youth in Lebanon, of which more than 57% are women. The unemployment rate in Jordan has reached 25% in Q1-2023 and an unprecedented 48.1% among youth. Moreover, women’s labor force participation stood at 14%, one of the lowest in the world.
Deepened by the financial crisis, digital divide, and unequal access to ICT services, the employability prospects for the youth worsened, especially for those in remote areas, with little access to training, education, and jobs.
On the other hand, the growing demand for digital services, combined with a wide-scale shift toward normalizing remote and gig work in the digital economy has opened opportunities to many marginalized communities, that have traditionally lacked access to conventional forms of employment.
Yet, there are many challenges to be addressed, among them are mixed levels of digital literacy among marginalized communities, combined with unstructured training and limited access to equipment and the internet.
Due to the global and remote nature of digital work, workers often lack the protections that come with traditional employment, such as minimum wage laws, benefits, and workplace safety regulations. This lack of protection makes digital workers more vulnerable to exploitation, low wages, and poor working conditions.
Additionally, digital workers are often tasked with performing unethical tasks, such as content moderation, which can expose them to disturbing and harmful content without proper psychological support. In some cases, workers are also asked to engage in unethical practices such as fake reviews or spreading misleading information.
Research has also indicated the precarious nature of digital work, where workers lack bargaining power which results in a race to the bottom with wages; as well as being asked to perform unethical tasks while often working in not safe working conditions.
It appears that current approaches to digital livelihoods are not operating at scale. This stagnation is due in part to supply and demand barriers, including obstacles such as inadequate identification systems for workers, and universal recognition of qualifications and skills, but also inconsistent and ineffective links between the private sector and displaced people. Thus far, the response to provide access to jobs for the displaced has been piecemeal, inconsistent, and siloed and has not resulted in wide-scale employment.
Crucial for digital livelihoods to be operationalized is a consistent investment in training so that people acquire the relevant skills to successfully work in the digital sector, both globally and locally.
Sustained support is also required to fulfill the promise of sustainable digital jobs. It is important to ensure that these opportunities are accessible to everyone and that workers are not exploited or left behind. It could also involve initiatives that promote digital literacy and training to ensure that workers have the skills needed to succeed in the digital economy.
Moreover, efforts to address the digital divide, and ensure that everyone has access to the necessary tools and infrastructure to participate in the digital economy are crucial for creating more equitable opportunities.
B.O.T's mission is to minimize the digital divide, provide equal training and employment opportunities to youth from remote and marginalized communities, and offer digital jobs and path to launch their careers in the tech world.
Our social objectives are :
- Provide opportunities to acquire new sets of workforce readiness skills (main focus on digital, data processing skills), as a first step of their journey with B.O.T.
- Provide with part or full-time employment opportunities and the ability to prove themselves in a range of skills (e.g. data collection, data annotation) within various industry fields through projects with B.O.T’s customers.
- Provide a base of knowledge and experience to enable youth to launch a career in tech.
- Increase awareness of Social Impact/Procurement and Responsibilities within local and international organizations.
B.O.T is the first social impact sourcing platform in MENA that provides high-quality data services executed by a managed workforce of upskilled youth from vulnerable communities.
Following the Agency model, B.O.T serves as a bridge between the end customer and the workforce, adding value by offering Project Management, Tech support, quality assurance, workforce management, and training.
Due to its flexible and extensive workforce, B.O.T is able to deliver large projects under strict deadlines, with minimal costs and superior quality.
To ensure consistent quality services, B.O.T provides training, on-job training, equipment, and internet access necessary to deliver a project, as well as employs a full-time team of skilled professionals - project managers, product managers, data scientists, marketing and business development, and human recourses manager, as well as collaborate with DOT Lebanon to continue the expansion of its workforce, developing new training curriculums and offer various digital skills training.
B.O.T targets unemployed and underemployed women and youth from refugees and host communities affected by the rising unemployment rates and lack of access to digital training and resources.
Our mission is to create and multiply social impact by providing digital training and employment opportunities to underprivileged communities in Lebanon and Jordan.
B.O.T.'s primary service offering is a data collection service for NGOs and corporations. B.O.T has been steadily growing its local market share in data collection every year, generating over $600K in sales revenues in 2022.
In 2021 in partnership with UNICEF, Alfanar and DOT Lebanon, B.O.T Lebanon successfully piloted a new service - Data annotation for AI models, delivering 25 projects to 9 international clients, generating $180K in revenues during the pilot phase only.
This project provides an opportunity to engage more women and youth in the digital economy and is not limited by the local customer base. In 2022 we were awarded a grant from the EBRD Star Venture program to scale and launch Data training for AI services internationally.
B.O.T beneficiaries are Lebanese and Jordanian youth who are under/unemployed, coming from rural and marginalized, who have been affected by the rising unemployment rates and lack of access to digital training and resources.
B.O.T proactively targets women (60% of the beneficiaries) and people with disabilities (6%) to include them in the workforce.
In 2023 B.O.T has access to 2,500 youth across Lebanon and Jordan, many of the youths come from underprivileged, low-income, and remote communities. The youth learns about B.O.T’s training and job opportunities through various outreach activities and gets vetted and registered on the B.O.T platform.
Since its inception in 2019, B.O.T provided upskilling and jobs to over 1,076 beneficiaries (60% women), earning a total of $856K in salaries, and training opportunities to over 14,000 individuals in partnership with DOT Lebanon and Jordan.
Expanding the AI service internationally gives B.O.T the potential to increase the social impact and provide training and employment opportunities to a larger number of people. We expect to sustain existing jobs and offer job opportunities to 150-200 new individuals and training opportunities to 300+ individuals.
By sustaining existing jobs and creating new job opportunities we will contribute to reducing unemployment and improving economic development in the affected communities. Additionally, providing training opportunities to more people will help equip individuals with the skills needed to succeed in the digital economy and increase their employability.
The founding team has been working together before the inception of B.O.T at its current partner NGO, DOT Lebanon, and has extensive experience working together which lays a strong foundation for effective teamwork and collaboration.
Marianne Bitar, is a Founder and CEO, she has extensive experience in NGO Management and relief and development project implementation and is an expert in issues surrounding refugee communities in Lebanon. Before forming B.O.T, Marianne was a country director at DOT Lebanon, managed operations at World Vision International, and established World Vision Lebanon’s refugee program, building an impressive network of Lebanese and International civil society organizations that served her duties in coordination, partnership and fundraising.
A feminist by all means Marianne has made it her personal mission to create activities that bridge together the gender divide in the digital world. A true believer in the butterfly effect, Marianne took the TEDx stage in 2016 to talk about this issue and how she was able to connect the dots in her life and her network - Ted Talk by Marianne Bitar Karam
Operations and Project Management unit, led by Charbel Saliba, includes 3 project managers and data scientist.
The Operations and Project Management unit is led by Charbel Saliba. Charbel has more than 10 years of experience in multiple countries and in several industries, ranging from distribution to sales, to operations, he has gathered multiple expertise that can be used in multiple departments within a company. Charbel is result oriented and is a multiplier, he is leading a team of account executives who are always delivering high standards projects.
The business development and marketing unit is led by Charbel Karam, Charbel graduated with a Bachelor’s & Master’s degree in Marketing, and he went on to apply his skills working for major holding corporations in Lebanon, launching 360-degree campaigns, and managing events and PR activations before joining DOT Lebanon in 2017 to launch its communications department and lead the brand creation, development and launching of B.O.T. Having the coordination skills of an eight-foot octopus, Charbel is our go-to-guy when it comes to supporting project management.
The Product Development unit led by Katya Egorova, is responsible for strategy, research, new business ideas piloting, and achieving operational excellence. Fulbright and DAAD scholar, Katya has a Ph.D. in Economics and a Master’s degree in International Business. Before joining B.O.T she led a data acquisition practice in CIS countries at Bloomberg, London, and worked as a head of operations at a health-tech startup, Slighter. Katya is also in charge of grant applications and relationships management, as well as the company's strategy.
The Talent Management Unit, which is in charge of outreach, training, upscaling skills of the workforce, and profiling, is led by Rita Hawa, who is an expert in the social enterprise ecosystem and the Talent Management field. Rita graduated from USEK holding a Bachelor’s degree in Marketing. Having a passion for HR and a people-centric orientation, Rita is a huge contributor to the placement and development of the workforce.
- Enable learners to bridge civic knowledge with taking action by understanding real-world problems, building networks, organizing plans for collective action, and exploring prosocial careers.
- Jordan
- Lebanon
- Growth: An organization with an established product, service, or business model that is rolled out in one or more communities
B.O.T's 2023-2024 objective is to continue generating impact and spreading awareness about B.O.T across Lebanon, Jordan, and other countries in the Middle East.
In the coming two years we aim to create at least 240 jobs including 40 full-time positions and work opportunities for 200 part-time workers, and 300+ training opportunities.
In order to continue growing and scaling we have to diversify our revenue sources to include international customers. Therefore the focus for the upcoming years is to access new clients in new markets and build an internationally recognizable brand and place Lebanon on the map for business process outsourcing,
The first step towards this goal is to scale and launch internationally our new line of service - Data Annotations for AI models, the revenues from which will be sufficient to sustain a solid team of annotators, team leaders, project managers, and developers and continue spreading the knowledge and impact in the community.
We recognize that to build a competitive edge in the crowded AI space we have to focus our human and financial resources on the following three areas:
- Technological capacity building,
- Workforce capacity building and
- Sales & marketing.
1 ) Technological capacity building - tech due diligence, acquisition, development, and integration of the proprietary data annotation platform with B.O.T proprietary in-house built Talent management platform and its further development. Assessment and application for data-specific quality and security certifications: ISO 27001, GDPR, and building data security protocol for data collection and data annotation. Acquisition of assets for the workforce.
2) Workforce capacity building - the quality-focused, dedicated and available workforce at scale is a primary need to succeed in the data annotation space. We face challenges in being able to efficiently retain, scale, and plan our workforce availability, mainly due to the freelance nature of the work and low visibility of the future projects pipeline. To address this we aim to double the number of engaged workforce and teams, as well as to offer fixed-term contracts to some of the workforce who will form core teams (it is estimated that a team of 8-10 workforce is managed by one team leader).
3) Sales & marketing activities - our impact is directly related to the revenues we cash through the projects. Therefore, to ensure a solid project pipeline from international customers, we need to invest in our brand recognition abroad, penetrate new markets, and capitalize on organic growth from the existing customer base.
To achieve the set goals, and ensure sustainable projects pipeline and jobs, we apply to receive financial support as well as access to the MIT Solve network of professionals to address the three above areas. Our business is built on trust and partnerships and we would like to be able to scale internationally using the same model, as well as share our knowledge and business expertise with other communities across the globe to create a global impact.
- Business Model (e.g. product-market fit, strategy & development)
- Product / Service Distribution (e.g. delivery, logistics, expanding client base)
Product and Strategy Manager