World of Good Development Organization, co-founded by alumna Priya Haji, MBA 03, received a $50,000 award last month for its free fair-wage analysis software.
The open-source Fair Trade Guide software platform provides localized pricing evaluation of handmade goods to improve wages of workers around the world. World of Good received the Katherine M. Swanson Equality Award Nov. 19 from the Swanson Foundation at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center before a crowd of more than 1,500 people, including Nobel Laureate and former Vice President Al Gore, who received a humanitarian award.
World of Good was among five innovators to receive a $50,000 Tech Award through San Jose's Tech Museum.
“Not only is this award a great honor, but it gives us the impetus to build out a critical feature of the Fair Wage Guide — an SMS application — that will make the Guide accessible to artisans all over the globe and help teach them how to assign appropriate monetary values to their products," says Ella Silverman, executive director of the World of Good Development Organization.
World of Good Development Organization’s Fair Wage Guide has been adopted into the buying practices of more than 700 businesses around the world. Since 2005, the wages of more than 25,000 artisans throughout the developing world have increased between 5 percent and 200 percent after using the Fair Wage Guide.
World of Good Development Organization is a nonprofit focused on improving the lives of low-income women in the developing world. It operates separately from the for-profit business arm of World of Good, which helps artisans around the world gain access to new, socially conscious customers.
Presented by Applied Materials, the Tech Awards celebrate the power of technology to address global challenges in the environment, economic development, education, equality, and health.