IAOP and The Rockefeller Foundation Announce Winners of 2021 Global Impact Sourcing Award

Press Release (ePRNews.com) - WINDERMERE, Fla. - Feb 17, 2021 - IAOP®, together with The Rockefeller Foundation, announced today the winners of its 2021 Global Impacting Sourcing Award (GISA).

This award recognizes both buyer and provider organizations as well as influencing organizations impacting local communities by creating jobs in the BPO industry in underserved areas.

Winners were chosen in two categories and are as follows:

• Impact Sourcing in a Provider Organization: Eclaro
• Impact Sourcing in a Provider Organization: IndiVillage
• Impact Sourcing in a Provider Organization: Techno Brain
• Impact Sourcing Influencer: CareerBox

IAOP and The Rockefeller Foundation will honor these impact sourcing leaders through IAOP’s online OWS21 platform during the Awards Ceremony on Thursday, February 18th.

“The GISA winners for 2021 were chosen from a strong field of 44 candidates and selected based on the significance of Impact Sourcing to their business model and their public commitment,” said Jon Browning, IAOP CSR Committee Chair and CEO of Global Mentorship Initiative. “Impact Sourcing has become an essential component of today’s BPO industry and service providers recognize this is an effective means for demonstrating social responsibility.”

“Companies are making conscious efforts to put impact sourcing practices into action because it helps society, creates goodwill for their reputations and contributes positively to their brands’ health and performance,” said Debi Hamill, CEO, IAOP. “We applaud these winning organizations for blazing a trail because doing well by doing good isn’t just a passing trend, it’s a paradigm shift that is changing our industry for the better.”

Impact Sourcing in a Provider Organization — Eclaro: Eclaro has three offices and over 650 employees in Metro Manila in the Philippines. They also have a non-profit school (kindergarten through college) that is run on four campuses and over 2,600 students. Eclaro prides itself on giving back to the local community and helping its employees and their families in every way possible. From a hiring standpoint, they give every opportunity to candidates to be evaluated and ultimately hired, regardless of their background and socioeconomic position provided they have the right qualifications for the openings. Eclaro hired 175 impact workers since the beginning of 2017 and has designed programs to hire even more impact workers over the upcoming years. In addition to this, their school plays a major factor in its impact sourcing vision. As education is important in gaining meaningful employment, they have instituted specialized programs to help students achieve the right education and skills to be hired as future Eclaro employees. Additionally, they’ve developed a program that allows its clients to sponsor scholarships for underprivileged students to attend Eclaro Academy at no cost.

Impact Sourcing in a Provider Organization — IndiVillage: Under its ‘Business for Good,’ philosophy, IndiVillage employs more than 300 individuals from rural Indian communities in centers in Raichur district in Karnataka and Yemmiganur in Andhra Pradesh. Seeking to bridge the gap between urban and rural India, it is centered on a greater impact on women and rural communities through thoughtful scale, responsible business, and employee-centered initiatives. IndiVillage’s cutting-edge solutions include image and data annotation, natural language processing, and content optimization for some of the world’s leading technology and e-commerce companies including Amazon, Appen, Alegion, Swiggy, Mercato, and Inkers. Its ‘profit-for-all’ model, has seen profits reinvested into the rural communities where its employees live. Over the last decade, IndiVillage has impacted over 35,000 lives through sustainable community development initiatives such as access to clean drinking water, improved livelihoods, better healthcare, and standardized education.

Impact Sourcing in a Provider Organization — Techno Brain: Having incepted in Africa and being operational for well over two decades in 19 countries within Africa, the ethos of inception itself was to empower lives and provide exposure in building digital talents and digital literacy. Impact Sourcing within Techno brain is not just a way of empowering lives but also a cause that is very close to the heart of this organization as it gets to employ people from marginalized and underprivileged backgrounds, provide necessary training and development, assist them with employment and watch them grow into their best forms, which also lets them live a decent life and also improve the lives of the people around them. This process has influenced the name pride for the initiative which is poverty reduction through Information and digital employment. From a companywide perspective as efforts, Techno Brain works directly with community-based individuals and also partners with community-based organizations and institutions where it has set up training facilities in underprivileged and marginalized localities.

Impact Sourcing Influencer — CareerBox: As a non-profit company, CareerBox identifies and trains candidates from underprivileged townships and places them in entry-level digitally-enabled jobs. Although sector and provider parameters are undefined, CareerBox has been fortunate to partner with one of the country’s largest domestic BPO employers, CCI Global (CCI). This partnership with CCI has enabled CareerBox to deliver on the promise of 100 000 lives being changed through job creation and permanent employment. CareerBox utilizes impact surveys to ascertain its influence and it has been found that, for every employee they place, four family members are now above the poverty line. Since its inception, it has placed around 35,619 unemployed and previously disadvantaged candidates into permanent jobs with a sustainable income proving to have a positive impact of 142,000 lives being changed in and around the local communities. The CareerBox gender ratio indicates that approximately 66 percent of placement were unemployed females.

About IAOP: IAOP is the global association that brings together customers, providers, and advisors in a collaborative, knowledge-based environment that promotes professional and organizational development, recognition, certification, and excellence to improve business service models and outcomes. IAOP connects you and your organization to its growing global community and to the resources you need to be successful. Visit IAOP.org (http://www.iaop.org/).

About The Rockefeller Foundation: The Rockefeller Foundation’s mission—unchanged since 1913—is to promote the well-being of humanity throughout the world. Together with partners and grantees, The Rockefeller Foundation strives to catalyze and scale transformative innovations, create unlikely partnerships that span sectors, and take risks others cannot. Visit RockefellerFoundation.org.

Media Contact:
Kate Tulloch-Hammond
Director, Media & Communications
+1.845.452.0600, extension 122
kate.hammond@iaop.org