Crowd2Map’s partner, Hope for Girls and Women Tanzania is among seven organizations that have been awarded an Open Map Development Tanzania (OMDTZ) Community Impact Microgrant of $5000. OMDTZ selected recipient organizations with the intention;
The grants provided will support these communities to leverage the use of OSM and mapping to help solve different community challenges.
Hope will use the grant to expand the existing Open Street Map (OSM) Community around Mugumu, Serengeti. By improving our maps of the region, we are able to provide better, faster reaching, efficient support and advice to girls and women who are at risk of, or who have been through, female genital mutilation (FGM) and gender-based violence (GBV).
The grant will help the Hope team to recruit 25 new OSM community mappers around Mugumu, who will be trained on how to use different tools that support mapping, including:
- Maps.me application
- ID editor
- JOSM
They will also receive training in how to use Open Data Kit Collector for Data Collection.
A lot of this training will involve the use of smartphones.
The goal is to map all of the health center facilities available in 30 villages around Mugumu, showing the services provided at each, and if the center facilities are adequate in relation to the community population.
The grant will additionally the team to buy equipment such as laptops, smartphones and routers which are critical for the work being done. They will also be able to rent a hall for workshops and training, provide transportation for data collection, and support other logistical requirements for a period of six months.
At this point, findings will be presented back to the community and Hope will also create a map of each village, showing the health center facilities that are available.
75% of the new mappers will be female, which helps to promote and encourage the inclusion of women in technology and OSM. We are seeing increasing numbers of women wishing to train and contribute to maps, and they are also getting a lot of enjoyment from seeing the benefits of technology on their daily lives and that of the local community.
We are excited to be welcoming to the workshop and training Mara Red Cross and SETCO Youth mappers who will be involved to learn more about how mapping can help solve community challenges.
We look forward to bringing you further updates on this Microgrant and the project in general.
Read more about why maps are so important for Tanzania and even get involved as a virtual volunteer. Mapping is protecting girls from Tanzania by ensuring help is able to reach them faster – and often time is of the essence.
