ruly introduces a Digital Photo Concierge service to thoughtfully organize and edit customers' unruly digital photos while employing women living in poverty in underdeveloped parts of the world.
ruly, a digital photo concierge service with a mission to create tech jobs for women in poverty, today announced an IndieGoGo campaign to raise $10,000 to fund expansion of its photo organizing service. The ruly service provides a much-needed solution to the problem of unorganized digital photo files. ruly is available on IndieGoGo now, and backers who support the project before the deadline on December 19, 2014, can choose between two kinds of perks: the Archive Service, which organizes past photos, and the Monthly Subscription, which organizes current photos on an ongoing basis.
Most people take a lot of digital photos but rarely organize them because it's such a time-consuming, painstaking process. Of course, the more the problem is neglected, the worse it gets. Technology alone doesn't provide a good solution because it cannot replicate the key element of human judgment.
Founded by seasoned entrepreneur Chad Mulder, ruly aims to solve the overwhelming photo problem while also pursuing a social impact goal of providing technology jobs for some of the world's most marginalized. Women living in poverty in developing countries are trained as photo specialists to sort and edit large quantities of photos. With this training, they can become active participants in today's most promising economy–the digital economy.
For customers, the ruly solution is simple. Customers send their photo files to ruly through Dropbox. Each photo is assessed individually to separate the Klutter–unnecessary duplicates, shots that are out of focus, and mistake shots–and identify the remaining Keepers. No photos are ever deleted; they are merely moved to orderly subfolders. From the Keepers, ruly photo specialists then find the very best shots–the Highlights. Customers can elect to have their Highlights edited, including cropping, color optimization, and beautiful filters. Highlights from the entire year are aggregated into an Annual Highlights folder, making a year's worth of the best photos completely ready and accessible for any creative project or photobook. The ultimate result: a thoughtfully organized library that makes navigating photo files intuitive and edited Highlights readily accessible.
Mulder was inspired to create ruly after traveling in East Africa with his wife and young boys as volunteers for a fair trade company. He was captivated by the way entrepreneurs were designing startups to address big social issues, and the positive impact they had on local families.
"We want to see the end of extreme global poverty. It has ravaged too much of the world for too long, and it has been especially brutal for women," says Mulder. "Instead of aid or charity, we've set out to create a sustainable business that generates transformative jobs. Not just any kind of job, but tech jobs. We believe this type of job creation can change the economic future of women, families and communities."
To source its workforce, ruly has partnered with Samasource, a nonprofit organization who connects unemployed women and youth in impoverished countries to digital work. Over 92% of new workers starting with Samasource are unemployed or underemployed. On average, these workers increase previous income by 114% after six months of Samasource employment, and 89% pursue additional means of formal employment and/or education after working for Samasource.
www.getruly.com
