On March 17, a crew of 10 ad tech executives takes a break from their daily lives and heads to a small rural community in Nepal's Terai region. But they're not there for company retreats or to discuss the latest ad tech trends.
They plan to dig the foundation for a three-room schoolhouse.
The group, which calls itself Team Daya (“daya” means “kindness” in Nepali), was born out of a desire to give back in some way, founding member Jay Sears said. . Jay Sears' resume includes executive positions at Rubicon Project (pre-Magnite). ), Mastercard, Contextweb.
Team Daya began fundraising in 2018 to build schools in Malawi, Senegal, Guatemala and Nepal.
“Many of us have been fortunate to find success in the ad tech business by accident,” Sears said. “And we were very lucky ourselves, so we started talking about what we could do to get a good result.”
4 or more walls
The upcoming trip to Nepal will be a homecoming of sorts for Team Daya. The first team was established in Nepal in 2019, in a town of about 2,500 people called Dayapur, about a mile from the border with India.
The Dayapur school is a sturdy, permanent, three-room building painted yellow, white, and maroon. More than 200 students currently take classes there. It is reinforced with cement, bricks and rebar to prevent damage from earthquakes and monsoons. There is no longer a need to cancel classes due to roof leaks during the monsoon season.
But these school buildings are about more than just four walls and weatherproof roofs, Sears said.
“Building a school is about more than the structure itself,” he said. “We are building for change, we are building for education, we are building for literacy, we are building for the fight against poverty.”
And it starts by breaking down practical barriers to learning.
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For example, in Senegal, where Team Daya built a school in 2022, classes were previously held in two makeshift classrooms made of sticks, leaves, cardboard and millet stalks. It was hot and dusty, and because there were no doors, donkeys and cows sometimes wandered inside. Not to mention the scorpions.
“In some cases, children walk miles to get to school, and when they get there, the environment is not conducive to learning,” Sears said. “We want to do everything we can to make education more accessible.”
Lay the foundation for funding
But these projects require a lot of work and planning before Team Dayā arrives in the village and begins digging the foundations with locals.
Members, who pay all personal expenses, including travel, spend months promoting the story, recruiting volunteers, and collecting donations. Typically, funding an entire school costs around 40,000 yen, including paint, shovels, nails, nuts and bolts, and payment for masons and other skilled labor contracted by Team Daya's NGO partner, buildOn. It costs more than a dollar.
Team Dayā has raised funding from a long list of ad tech angels and several corporate donors, including The Trade Desk, WideOrbit, and U of Digital. SecurityPal, a security startup whose CEO and founder Pukhar Hamal grew up in rural Nepal before immigrating to the United States as a child, is running a $10,000 matching campaign for Build Nepal in March.
And every dollar counts.
For example, the middle school son of Mr. Sears' former Rubicon colleague collected 500 bottles and cans, each with a nickel on them, to donate $250 to Team Daya.
“You don't have to travel halfway around the world to help,” Sears said. “There is a way for everyone to make an impactful contribution.”
Building infrastructure (literally)
When Team Daya arrives in town, there is often a community celebration to welcome them.
At Dayapur, tables were piled with fruits and local flowers, speeches of thanks were given, and hours of dancing took place. In Senegal, the team was greeted by a parade of cheering children and galloping horses.
The celebration culminates in what is known as the signing of the Covenant, a formal agreement codifying the partnership between the community, local education authorities, Team Dayā, and buildOn. This includes community efforts to complete construction, staff schools, and ensure equal access to education for men and women.
Everyone in the village, including the children, lines up to sign the pledge. Also, illiterate people use ink pads to sign papers with their fingerprints.
Once that's done, all the men, women, children and volunteers roll up their sleeves and start digging, sifting the soil, tying the rebar, mixing the cement and laying the bricks.
Some people get used to it quickly. For example, Mike Benedek, CEO of Datonics, has helped build schools in Senegal and Guatemala and is flying to Nepal for his next project, but he doesn't want to lay concrete blocks or apply mortar. He became particularly good at this, earning him the nickname “bricklayer.”
“It's hard work. It's sweaty work. But it's also an opportunity for cultural exchange and laughter,” Sears said. “And the results were quite surprising. Even after just a few days, you could see the outline of the school emerging where previously it was just a patch of dirt.”
a little perspective
It typically takes about a week to complete the foundation and two to four months to complete full construction.
Once the foundation is complete, the community takes over the project and Team Dayā sets out for ad tech land. There, people tend to get caught up in the minutiae of digital marketing.
That's not to say that topics like the end of third-party cookies, loss of signal, alternate IDs, the scourge of duplicate bids, and the rise of advertising-driven sites aren't important topics.
But a little perspective never goes amiss, says Lauren Rose, vice president of publisher sales and partnerships at Connatix and a new hire at Team Dayā. She signed up – a trip to Nepal in March will be her first – because there’s a world outside of ad tech.
“It's a luxury and a privilege to focus on things like online privacy and what happens when cookies crumble,” Rose said. “Team Daya is about asking what else we can do to make an impact, to do something meaningful, to do something bigger.”
To see lots of fun photos of Team Dayā projects or to donate, click the link below. Visit the group website.
