Half of the 500,000 MDWs in Lebanon are undocumented—many have run away from abuse and exploitation. Once they leave their employer’s homes, they lose legal status and have limited access to work.
The Kafala (sponsorship) System is widespread across the Arab region, and is used in construction and domestic services to monitor migrant workers. This system is highly unregulated, leaving workers at the whim of their employers. Passport confiscation, violence, exploitation are commonplace, resulting in widespread suicide attempts among MDWs (UN 2021).
Activist efforts seek to correct this situation through one-on-one casework support and advocacy, that can only achieve so much in a country where corruption and disorder is pervasive. I believe that a business format can open up a space for private regulation from within and without the Kafala system.
Based on previous research for Oxfam in 2019, I identified an opportunity for a social enterprise that would solve the biggest issue that MDWs face—access to work, and a work permit without having to live with a (potentially abusive) private guarantor.
Design an app that connects customers to workers, and provides continuous work at fair wages, under safe conditions.
In 2019, I met with local activists and community leaders to discuss the project, and we decided we would need to prioritize safety through rules and values, and make our mission statement clear.
I established two user groups:
I designed a prototype for a customer scheduling a cleaning service. I prioritized the following pain points and determined features to address them:
Users feel uncomfortable having another person in their house/being in another person's house →
✔︎ ID verification of all users
✔︎ Two-way rating system to moderate behavior
Language diversity and literacy levels cause issues with meet ups and task instruction →
✔︎ Icons to communicate across languages
✔︎ Public meet up points to address safety concerns and facilitate logistics
✔︎ Filtering users by languages spoken
Users have trouble informally agreeing on fees, find cleaning companies too expensive, and want a service that is ethical →
✔︎ Highlight cooperative value propositions
✔︎ Clear and competitive price breakdowns to all end-users
While I did the initial development of this project and pitched it at an ILO-sponsored startup incubator; in late 2019, Lebanon faced popular protests followed by an economic crisis and a global pandemic, so this project never came to fruition.
To reboot, I decided to make it my capstone Google Certificate project: UX Design for Social Good.
I still have hopes that this project can take off, and I am happy to have a more tangible design ready to pitch for funding.