Selam is a 27-year-old woman hailing from a small farming village in Gurage zone, southern Ethiopia. She is the daughter of a strong single mother who raised her and her five siblings through tough circumstances.
From an early age, Selam had to help support her family. Her mother had to sell all they had to pay for medical care for one of Selam’s brothers who has an ongoing mental illness. As a result, Selam was sent to Addis Ababa to live with a family and work as a full-time babysitter at the very young age of eight. She worked for 10 years and at the same time was able to attend evening school and managed to complete grade eight.
At the age of 18, Selam had to take on more responsibility to support her family as her mom was aging and developing health issues. Selam migrated to Lebanon as a domestic worker and sent all her earnings back home to support her family. However, after six years, when the economic crisis hit Lebanon, Selam lost her job and was forced to return to Ethiopia. She returned to Addis Ababa and relied on distant relatives and friends for temporary shelter. She had hopes of securing a job and even finishing high school and pursuing higher education, but she struggled to find work.
Selam then learned about the GoodayOn gig work connection platform from a friend and registered on the mobile application as a gig worker in the categories of cooking, cleaning maid, and nanny services. Within two weeks Selam received a call for a one-month gig as a babysitter (Monday to Friday, 8 hours/day) for a family visiting Addis Ababa from overseas. The gig paid 3,500 ETB. The family that hired Selam was very happy with her attentiveness and gave her an excellent rating, review, and recommendation on the GoodayOn platform.
About a month later, Selam received another gig through GoodayOn, this time as a cook and maid. She worked 3-4 hours three days a week for 2,000 ETB per month. She continued to pick up additional work through the platform, which included another part-time cook and maid gig working half a day three days a week for 2,500 ETB per month, and another part-time engagement working half a day five days a week for 3,000 ETB per month.
Selam’s monthly income is now more than 7,500 ETB. She is able to send money home to support her family and is planning to rent her own house. She has also begun to believe that her dream of continuing education is within her reach and no longer just a dream. The GoodayOn gig work connection platform has created a new channel of market access for Selam to maximise her monthly earning while at the same time enables her to have breaks on Saturday afternoons and Sundays. In contrast, traditional full-time employed house maids are paid an average monthly salary of 2,500 ETB with long working hours and no breaks during the weekends.
Selam is just one of many young women whose prospects are more promising because of the GoodayOn gig work connection platform.
The platform was developed by GOnline Digital Advertising PLC to connect gig workers to job providers/employers. As part of an intervention to increase access for poor women and youth, LIWAY supported platform enhancements and service expansion to enable job seekers without smartphones and those who are digitally illiterate to access the service via a call centre and SMS.
An increasing number of LIWAY´s target group members are expected to access GoodayOn to connect to gig opportunities in the near future as planned marketing campaigns (TV advertisements, street campaigns) commence implementation. In addition, ongoing service enhancements based on learnings and user feedback are being planned, which will continue to increase the value of the platform to both job providers/employers and job seekers, as well as attract an increasing number of women.
