SoftHope

As the famous quote says "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”. Therefore, we think it's time to revisit the traditional model of helping the least developed countries and their people. It’s not sufficient, nor a sustainable model, to help them just with the standard types of charities, grants, and donations. More importantly, they need to be helped with targeted investments, strategic partnerships, development of the required knowledge and skill set, and through the provision of creative work opportunities.

Hence, we believe that upskilling of the required skill set, and then the provision of decent and professional work opportunities to these highly deprived nations within their home countries will make them socially and economically empowered. Furthermore, it would also let them live a happy, satisfied, and contentful life in their own countries, instead of being left with no other option but to think of migrating to the rich and technologically advanced countries in search for a better life.

Soft Hope™ is a nonprofit organization registered with Companies House (HMRC), incorporated on June 11, 2024, under the registration number SC813189 in the UK. We are a gender-inclusive, carbon-neutral, and a mission-driven social organization. We show zero tolerance to violence, racism, and discrimination in all forms. We fully believe in the humanitarian principles of compassion, respect, coexistence, and mutual cooperation as the only means for ensuring a peaceful, caring, fair, and prosperous world. Our team is composed of social activists, academics, IT experts, and other professionals from all over the world who came forward with a common vision to enable the people living in the most deprived countries to be economically empowered in a sustainable way.

We are committed to bringing a positive change with sustainable impacts on the lives of the poorest nations living on earth through their skills development, making global partnerships, and by facilitating creative arrangements to provide them with software, IT, and technology-based work opportunities within their homelands. Hence, by doing so we aim at giving them a “Soft Hope”.

We envision a fair and prosperous world where people from the least developed nations could find equal opportunities or at least sufficient possibilities to develop their knowledge and skill set that require of them to find decent and professional work opportunities within their home countries.

We aim at creating a long-lasting and sustainable impact on the lives of people living within the least development countries through upgrading their technological skills and IT competences, and then connecting them with the potential clients and their outsourced work opportunities both locally and internationally through forming global partnerships and facilitating creative work arrangements. Hence, we aim to give them a hope to be economically empowered and provide them with a way forward to positively contribute to the shaping of global economy.

The UN List of Least Developed Countries (LDCs)

There are currently 45 economies designated by the United Nations as the least developed countries (LDCs), entitling them to preferential market access, aid, special technical assistance, and capacity-building on technology among other concessions.

Least Developed Countries

(45 countries)

Africa 33, Asia 8, Caribbean 1, Pacific 3

These 45 LDCs are distributed among the following regions:

1. Africa (33): Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Togo, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania, and Zambia
2. Asia (8): Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Nepal, Timor-Leste, and Yemen
3. Caribbean (1): Haiti
4. Pacific (3): Kiribati, Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu

Source: UN list of least developed countries | UNCTAD