GlobalSale Ligia Nistor December 14 , 2011 1

The V-Unit is an optional elective unit that students can take for credit at Carnegie Mellon University. The goal of a V-Unit project is to see how computer science and technology can improve society in non-traditional and under-funded areas. GlobalSale is an undertaking implemented as part of the VUnit framework and it tries to show how technology can lead to a more fair-trade global market. Our work on GlobalSale is at the intersection of two types of V-Units: the survey and the project. We have gathered information about how current organizations and companies are trying to make a contribution to the well-being of people in disadvantaged countries around the world. We have also implemented a prototype website meant to understand how the American public reacts to the idea of “fair-trade”. More specifically, we wanted to understand if the GlobalSale website, which wants to be a bridge between the Romanian artisans and the American public, is implementable and what are its chances of success. GlobalSale is a web-service that showcases the work of Romanian artisans to the American public. The GlobalSale website displays pictures of products made by Romanian artisans. The prototype website allows the artisans to upload images of their work and allows the clients to order the products online. The products will be shipped using international postal services. Our underlying motivation is our desire to reward the artisans from countries with a less stable economy with the right amount of money for their work. We want the artisans to receive almost the entire sum of money for their products. We say “almost“ because the shipping costs and the management of the website have to be taken care of. The money needed for running the website will be minimal at first, as we have the technical skills to implement the web-service and keep it running smoothly. In the long run, we plan to allow external advertisments to be placed on the website, to account for some of the extra expenses. Possible sources of funding for the artisans are organizations like Kiva, which provide micro-credits to beginning entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurs will be discovered by making occasional visits to Romania and through the personal contacts of the main author of this paper. The contribution of GlobalSale is the ability to pay the artisans what they deserve because there is no need of a warehouse for storing the products and no need to pay employees. Since our prototype solution is a web-service and our intention is for the products to be shipped from Romania to the customer’s address, our hypothesis is that an online international is feasible and has good chances of success.