DDD is growing! Since DDD's Phnom Penh office opened in July 2001 with 18 employees, we have established two more offices, and now employ a total of 189 disadvantaged young adults in the Southeast Asia region.

The Phnom Penh office has increased personnel by more than 500% since its foundation, starting with 18 employees and, as of February 2005, providing work for over 130 Cambodians. The Phnom Penh office includes support personnel for other offices, including a financial division and an IT department. We also have an on-site medical advisor and a dedicated staff member for our sex trafficked women's program. The office hopes to continue this growth and develop the skills of local Cambodians.

Our Battambang office opened in October 2003. It is committed to stimulating Cambodia's provincial development and curbing urban migration by providing technology-employment in rural Cambodia; the office currently has 25 employees. The Battambang site is a branch office, and is managed by our team in Phnom Penh.

DDD opened an office in Lao PDR’s capital city, Vientiane, in December 2003. The Lao office works directly with DDD North America and has a workforce of 33 people. In addition, the Lao office recently began a volunteer program where over 30 local citizens have already learned computers and practiced their English skills, enabling them to gain employment elsewhere.

Our model for expansion is to establish data service enterprises in developing countries by partnering with existing local NGOs. Further more, we partner with NGO's in developed countries who can provide technical assistance volunteers with business skills. Our facility in Phnom Penh serves as a training center for new managers from other countries.

Sustainability

We are currently working with our international partners to evaluate expansion opportunities, both within our current offices and potentially into new regions of Southeast Asia. In any determination, we will consider both the viability of operating a business enterprise in the area as well as whether this expansion would benefit our targeted disadvantaged groups.

Our continued expansion to new sites depends on a growing business. As a social enterprise nonprofit, DDD strives to achieve financial sustainability, where our operational and social mission expenses are covered entirely by the revenue we bring in from our digitization work. In December 2004, DDD reached a major milestone, where all three of our offices reached full sustainability in the same month.

Before we assess tangible steps for further expansion, DDD would like its existing sites to be consistently sustainable, as this will allow DDD to concentrate its efforts on the expansion process. The sustainability milestone we reached in December is an enormous first step to the actualization of this goal, and for the next 6 months, we will be focusing our efforts on securing financial sustainability.