Category: Uncategorised

For Open Data Day on March 6^th 2021 Crowd2map hosted a webinar on Open Gender Data for Tanzania. We were joined by a number of amazing speakers:

• Revi Stirling – Director, USAID W-GDP WomenConnect Challenge will talk about financial inclusion and the digital divide.
• Naledi Hollbruegge, Data Scientist at UNDP. Naledi has a background in Psychology and started her career in social research before becoming a data analyst focusing on self-service analytics tools and data visualisation. She now works with nonprofit organisations to support them in making more data-driven decisions and gain insights through effective data visualisation.
• Dr Annemarie Middelburg. consultant and FGM expert.
• Heather Leson, Technologist, Digital Strategy and Partnerships, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Cresent, co-curator Data Playbook
• Laura Mugeha, Geospatial engineer & YouthMappers Regional Ambassador
• Christina Reuben, Environmental Scientist, OMDTZ
• Raya Idrissa Ahmada. Assistant Lecturer at the State University of Zanzibar (SUZA) and a Youthmappers Regional Ambassador. She is also the Founder of Mshauri STEM Initiative with the aim of helping young girls have STEM careers.
• Theresia Charles Numbi, a CEO of Lighthouse (EA) Legal Clinic (LEALC), Advocate of the High Court and Assistant Lecturer at Tumaini University Dar es Salaam College.

There was a very fruitful discussion and the opportunity for networking. In conclusion we agreed that,

 “For progress towards gender equality, we need better identification of issues affecting women and girls.”

The speakers’ slides are here. If you would like to know more about this important issue, and how to get involved, please get in touch.

Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) is a traditional practice prevalent in many parts of Africa and across the world. It is rooted in gender inequality and attempts to control a woman’s body. FGM in Tanzania secures a higher dowry for the parents of the girl who has undergone the procedure.  FGM was criminalised in 1998 in Tanzania, so it is frequently undertaken in secret and unhygienic, dangerous conditions. 

How can I help stop FGM?

Crowd2Map Tanzania is an entirely volunteer-based mapping project putting rural Tanzania on the map.  Having better open-source maps helps activists protect girls from FGM and supports navigation and community development.

Since 2015, over 13,000 remote volunteers worldwide, based in countries ranging from Poland to China, Brazil to the United States, to name a few, have been adding roads and buildings to digital maps and supporting the cause.

This year with the many challenges resulting from COVID-19, more than ever, we need all the support we can get to continue our mission to end FGM and get help to vulnerable girls faster.  You can volunteer from home, contributing to the first stage of mapping, as long as you have an internet connection, the team on the ground in Tanzania then completes the process using their local knowledge. Get started and find out more here.

Will you become a remote online volunteer?

Find out more about some of our volunteers here:

“I first found out about the 16 Days Campaign when Rhobi Samwely organised a 16 Days March around Mugumu, Tanzania, in December 2015,” recounts Janet Chapman, Founder of Crowd2Map Tanzania.  Rhobi opened the Mugumu Safe House in 2014 to provide safety and support to girls at risk for genital mutilation in Tanzania.

“This was the first ever 16 Days March in Mugumu, and it stirred a lot of interest – and bemusement – on the part of the locals,” Janet said.  “About 200 girls marched around town singing ‘we want to be modern, uncut girls’ and demanding their rights.  As it turned out, the March itself was stewarded by local police, and this was an enormous step forward in forming a cooperative relationship between the officers and the Mugumu Safe House staff and residents.”

Founded in 1991, the 16 Days of Activism campaign runs annually from November 25^th (International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women) to December 10^th (International Human Rights Day).  The Campaign’s founding in 1991 followed, and commemorates, the December 6, 1989, deaths of 14 female students at the University of Montreal.  Often referred to as the Montreal Massacre, it involved a male student who entered the University’s Engineering Department and after declaring his intent to kill feminists, he shot and killed the 14 students.

The theme of the 2019 Campaign – Ending Gender-Based Violence in the World of Work – reflects and celebrates the passage in 2019 of Convention 190 (C190) by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to address gender-based violence in the working world.  What is significant about C190 is that it is the ILO’s first Convention (which includes Recommendation 206 as guidance) to address sexual harassment and violence against women in the working world. 

Will C190 change anything?

The ILO Conventions are a type of treaty that commits ratifying member nations to a specific course of action.  Compliance is self-reported, and ILO conventions tend to act as benchmarks against which ratifying nation commits itself to strive toward.          

Created in 1919 as part of the Treaty of Versailles, the ILO is a specialised United Nations agency, sometimes referred to as an international parliament of labour.  It acts as a forum where social and labour questions are discussed and debated.  In recent decades, ILO members have expressed concerns about poor working conditions in the global economy – where inequality and displacement of workers continues to increase. 

Christine Lagarde, former Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and current head of the European Central Bank, said she made female empowerment a key goal for the IMF.  “I didn’t see #MeToo coming but I welcome it immensely,” Lagarde said.  “Sexual harassment is only scratching the surface. Violence against women is still a massive issue and we are not just talking about low-income countries: it is in all societies.  It has to be discussed, addressed and fought against. There are some terrible things happening to women.”

One alternative that has been discussed is to incorporate ILO labour standards into the World Trade Organisation, where member nations could retaliate for unjust practices through trade sanctions. 

Hiring more women helps drive economic growth

According to Lagarde, 88% of all countries in the world have legal restrictions against women in the workplace. “Some [nations] forbid women from doing specific jobs, 59 countries have no laws against sexual harassment in the workplace and there are 18 countries where women can be legally prevented from working,” she reports.  A 2019 ILO report on global employment also cites the lack of progress in closing the gender gap in labour force participation – 48% female compared to 75% male. 

The IMF is already pushing member nations to implement policies that empower women, Lagarde said, noting that women bring new skills to the workplace and help boost productivity – as well as workforce size.  The empowerment of women results in “higher growth, a reduction in inequality, an improvement in the strength of the economy and a more diversified, export-focused country,” she reports.

Even advanced countries need improvement, she contends – the female workforce participation in such countries is still way below that of men, and the gender pay gap among developed countries is approximately 16%.  But at the same time, some nations are making progress.  Lagarde lauded Japan in particular for increasing its childcare budget, which takes some of the burden off working mothers.

To their credit, some nations have already addressed intimate partner violence by providing support for affected workers.  In 2004, the Philippines became the first country to establish 10 days paid leave of absence for workers affected by domestic violence.  New Zealand adopted a similar law in 2018.  Collective bargaining agreements in countries such as Australia, Brazil, Canada, and the United Kingdom now provide paid leave and other entitlements to victims of domestic violence.

Addressing misconduct in the workplace

Prevention is about giving workers multiple options, such as offering a hotline, or an opportunity to speak with the personnel department or with their manager, according to labour lawyer Amy Oppenheimer.  “If you are only providing employees one means of recourse, you’re inevitably deterring a big chunk of the workforce,” she said, adding that employers often need multiple tools for dealing with misconduct – such as bystander training, mediation and alternative dispute resolution, or training about communication and respect.  

Sexual harassment is often triggered by an imbalance of power, so the emergence of women into leadership positions does make a difference.  “When you have at least some women in leadership, there’s a very subtle but important cultural change that takes place, and it’s that kind of change that really is the foundation for eliminating sexual harassment,” reports Stephanie A. Scharf, chair of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession.

The following organisations focus on the promotion of women’s rights. 

To volunteer, apply for an internship or a job, or to find services and support, contact any of the following:

BAOBAB for Women’s Human Rights. 323A, Muri Okunola Street, P.S. Box 73630, Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria. Tel: 234-1-262 6267.  www.baobabwomenorg.  Focused on women’s legal rights issues under customary, statutory and religious laws in Nigeria.

Center for Reproductive Rights. 199 Water Street, New York, NY 10038, 917-637-3600:  www.reproductiverights.org.  Nonprofit legal advocacy organization dedicated to promoting and defending women’s reproductive rights worldwide.  Offices located in Washington DC; Bogota, Columbia; Nairobi, Kenya; Kathmandu, Nepal; and Geneva, Switzerland.

Equality Now. 125 Maiden Lane, 9^th Floor, Suite B, New York, NY 10038. 212-586-1611.  www.equalitynow.org.  Committed to ending violence against women around the world.  Offices in London UK and Nairobi, Kenya.

Federation of Women’s Lawyers Kenya (FIDA Kenya), P.O. Box 46324, Gitanga Road, Nairobi, Kenya. Tel: 722509760.  www.fidakenya.org.  Objective is to increase access to justice for women in Kenya and enhance pubic awareness of women’s rights.

Global Justice Center. 11 Hanover Square, 6^th Floor, New York, NY 10005. Tel: 212-725-6530. www.globaljusticecenter.net. Lawyers and advocates who specialize in international law for the purpose of advancing gender equality and human rights.

International Rescue Committee. 122 East 42^nd Street, New York, NY, 10168-1289. Tel: 212-551-3179.  www.rescue.org.  Providing assistance to people whose lives and livelihoods have been shattered by conflict and disaster.

Legal Momentum.  32 Broadway, Suite 1801, New York, NY 10004. Tel: 212-925-6635.  www.legalmomentum.org.  Legal advocacy organization dedicated to advancing the rights of women and girls. Programs focus on human trafficking, workplace equality, violence against women and girls, equal education opportunities, and fairness in the courts. 

National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. 600 Grant, Suite 750, Denver, Colorado 80203. Tel: 303-839-1852.  www.ncadv.org.  Mission is to support efforts to demand a change in conditions leading to domestic violence, supporting survivors, and holding offenders accountable.

National Partnership for Women and Families.  1875 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 650, Washington, DC 20009.  202-986-2600.  www.nationalpartnership.org.  Advocates for women’s health, reproductive rights, and economic justice through policy research, participation in coalitions, and public education.

Pace Women’s Justice Center.  78 N. Broadway, White Plains, NY 10603. Tel: 914-422-4188. www.law.pace.edu/bwjc.  Legal services for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and elder abuse.    

UN Women. United Nations Secretariat, 405 East 42^nd Street, New York, NY 10017-3599. www.unwomen.org.   Mission is to develop and uphold standards and create an environment in which every woman and girl can exercise her human rights and live up to her potential.  Liaison offices in Denmark, United Arab Emirates, Belgium, Ethiopia, United States, Japan, and Switzerland.  Numerous regional office in Africa, Americas and Caribbean, Arab States, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe and Central Asia.   

Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice.  Noordwal 10 2513 EA The Hague, The Netherlands.  Tel: +31 (70) 302 9911.  www.iccwomen.org.  This office works with women most affected by conflict situations under investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC).  They advocate for accountability & prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence crimes and gender justice through the International Criminal Court (ICC) and domestic courts.

Women’s Refugee Commission.  15 West 37^th Street, 9^th Floor, New York, NY 10018. Tel: 212-551-3115.  www.womenscommission.org. They work to improve the lives and protect the rights of women and children displaced by conflict and violence.  

Women’s Legal Centre. 7^th Floor Constitution House, 124 Adderley Str., Cape Town, South Africa. www.wice.co.za.  Established by a group of women lawyers to advance women’s rights – particularly vulnerable and marginalised women – and to promote their access to justice and equitable resources.    

Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights.  Kodzero/Amalungelo House, No. 103 Sam Nujoma (2^nd) Street, Harare, Zimbabwe.  www.zlhr.org.  Mission is to protect and defend human rights through sustainable litigation, education and advocacy and help build a culture of tolerance and adherence to democratic values and practices.

Resources
Mugumu Safe House
16 Days of Activism
Convention 190
International Labour Organization     
ILO Conventions
Treaty of Versailles
International Monetary Fund   
European Central Bank
World Trade Organization

When I first realised the need for maps in Tanzania 4 years ago and started Crowd2Map I had not heard of Missing Maps. However about 3 months in I came across the very active and friendly London group which I have been attending fortnightly ever since, and their support and advice has been invaluable.  This week Missing Maps turned 5, a time of reflection for the founders including Ivan Gayton.

He originally envisioned it as a finite endeavour that shouldn’t last more than 4 years, and states “The idea was: what if instead of relying on media coverage of crises to generate volunteer engagement to map after disasters had already struck, we used the power of humanitarian movements to build a community to map the homes of vulnerable people before disasters?

In Haiti in 2010, using OpenStreetMap data was an interesting new idea, practiced by a couple of innovators alongside the “proper, professional GIS” being done by the cluster coordination. By the time Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines in 2013, OpenStreetMap was at least co-equal with the closed data. In the West African Ebola outbreak in 2014 open, community-generated map data was unquestionably the dominant source of geographical information. Open map data is now the default for humanitarian and crisis response.

So why didn’t we declare victory and move on? Why do we still need the Missing Maps? Because what I had originally seen as success turned out to be no more than a starting point. I had failed to anticipate the range of uses for open map data. I was focused on patient origins and spatial epidemiology—still critically important but not the only impactful use—and did not realize the importance and possibilities of locally-driven field mapping. The remote volunteering and mapathons, which attracted a startlingly diverse and extraordinarily passionate volunteer community, have now largely accomplished the original goal of creating the base-map vector features in some places. There’s more to be done, to be sure, but the key gap in many places is no longer digitization, its local knowledge and ways to operationalize the data.

The ultimate goal of humanitarian action is to save life, alleviate suffering, and restore dignity. Mappers cannot claim to save lives directly; if we are to have an impact it is by facilitating those who are saving lives (or helping themselves). To reach its full potential, the Missing Maps must not only provide basemap data, but to enrich them with local knowledge and see that the maps are put to use.

I now see three phases of Missing Maps action:

1) Create a base layer of vector data across the most vulnerable areas of the globe using digital volunteers

2) Infuse local knowledge into the map using field mapping campaigns in collaboration with local people (the most critical local knowledge being local place-names, landmarks, and administrative divisions—without which we cannot disambiguate locations described by people in their own words).

3) Actively partner with people working to save lives, alleviate suffering, and restore dignity to make them more effective using our data, skills, and knowledge.

The Missing Maps has basically succeeded at phase one in many places. Phase two is in progress; many of us are increasingly engaged in work with local communities to add the local information to the map that makes it useful and relevant to people working in these contexts. Phase three has, in my view, not yet even properly begun. Sure, a few well-funded agencies have better GIS support as a result of the Missing Maps, and there are sporadic uses of Missing Maps data arising spontaneously here and there throughout the humanitarian field, but humanitarian action and crisis response are still nowhere near achieving the additional effectiveness that a truly inclusive global community of mapping practice could provide.

For example, in the current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, patient origins are still poorly understood. This is not even to speak of the colossal gap in disease surveillance throughout the low-income world, the lack of accurate demographic data for public health and services, the desperate lack of transparency in land titles, or the difficulty in navigating the more or less informal settlements that one-quarter of humanity live in. The Missing Maps should be saving and improving many more lives. It can do so once we are working directly with people on the front lines, understanding their problems and constraints, and working with them to operationalize map data.

There are hundreds of thousands of health centres in Africa awaiting the support needed to properly understand their patients’ origins and act upon them to reduce disease burdens. There are aid agencies, civil servants, private businesses, taxi drivers, public health ministries, environmental activists, scientists, farmers, and pizza delivery bicyclists waiting for our help (in some cases whether they know it or not). The Missing Maps must become much more than a digital volunteer community, it must become an inclusive global movement to empower all of the things that save and improve lives.

Finally, maps themselves can in some small way contribute to human dignity. To be on a map is to be acknowledged, is to be known, is to be recognised, is to be counted. It is for the world to know that you are there and that you have needs, that you have rights, and that you must not be forgotten or passed over. This requires more than a nice map on the Web made by digital volunteers and aid agencies, it requires working together with the inhabitants of the previously neglected places in the world. Five years in, the Missing Maps has seen success beyond our wildest dreams. But it turns out the work is just beginning, and we must go beyond our original digital volunteering mandate to achieve our full potential. Let’s get to it, shall we?”

Thank you to Ivan for expressing the rationale behind Crowd2Map so clearly.  We want to partner with anyone interested in mapping for development in Tanzania and beyond – so if you any suggestions please do get in touch. 

Imagine that you are able to look down from a great height, over any region of the world, and view villages and farms in great detail. You might see, for example, what appears to be a well-trod footpath that bypasses a shed or a goat pen, or a building tagged as a school but with no playground or soccer field.  You see no paved roads or sidewalks.  What would it be like to exist in this world that you are viewing? 

Mapping on OpenStreetMap (OSM) offers a challenge.  But anyone who has experienced it can testify to how it magically takes us to unfamiliar corners of the world to peer into remote towns and villages.  It offers us a view into the lives of people who not only look different from ourselves but who might also be living on the edge of starvation.  In a humanitarian context, the experience of mapping can be transformational, especially when used to help at-risk populations, such as the young women of Tanzania.    

Mapping to End Female Genital Mutilation

Although the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) remains illegal in Tanzania, many young Tanzanian females, especially those living in remote regions of the country, are subjected to this practice.  This past September, Janet Chapman gave a presentation at the State of the Map (SOTM) Conference in Heidelberg, Germany, on the progress being made on Crowd2MapTanzania. 

One of Crowd2Map’s primary goals is to protect girls against FGM, and the initiative has made remarkable progress.  Nearly 12,000 volunteers around the world have already added 3.6 million buildings to OpenStreetMap (OSM), using satellite images to trace buildings.  These remote volunteers access the Slack Channel, which now has 3,000 members, to ask questions or receive feedback.  On the ground in Tanzania, over 1,600 activists use smart phones to add villages, schools, hospitals, clinics, offices, shops, churches, and safe houses to the OSM maps.  

As a Trustee of Tanzania Development Trust and its Communications Manager, Janet has been spending at least two months a year in Tanzania for the last six years. From her time on the ground, it was clear to her that mapping was badly needed.  So, in November 2015, she founded Crowd2Map Tanzania to protect Tanzanian girls from FGM but also to promote community development.

Past efforts to provide protection and support to girls at risk of FGM have always been greatly “hindered by lack of mapping,” Janet noted, and that lack has made regional travel difficult.  “Without maps, young Tanzanian girls cannot find safe houses, and sanctuary from FGM practices. And safe house staff members and police officers cannot find girls at risk for FGM.”

One of the principal activists on the ground in Tanzania is Rhobi Samwelly, who set up the Mugumu Safe House, where girls can find safety and support.  Rhobi herself could have died from FGM.  “When she was cut at the age of 13, Rhobi almost bled to death,” Janet told her audience in Heidelberg. “Her girlfriend had been cut and she died, and her body was left in bushes surrounding the village.” 

Because it is illegal, the practice of cutting is largely performed without medical personnel present. Rhobi’s ultimate goal is to place an activist in all villages, so that the village activist can become someone girls at risk will turn to for protection and transport to a safe house.   For further information about FGM, see 28toomany.org/country/tanzania.

State of the Map (Heidekberg 2019)

Like other 2^nd generation World Wide Web tools, OSM draws much of its influence from community participation around the globe.  Representatives from humanitarian, recreational, governmental, and academic attended the 2019 State of the Map Conference in Heidelberg to present their work and share their concerns.

“I’ve been involved in the OSM community for four years now,” reports Janet Chapman, and it was fantastic to meet up with people in Heidelberg who I generally only see once a year at such events and find out how their work is progressing. 

 “Plus, I had the opportunity to meet new people who are also doing amazing things, she added.  “One of the projects we are most interested in is the use of machine learning to speed up the mapping process.  We have already set up some pilot projects and are excited about the results.  We will start rolling this out soon, on wider basis.”

Before exploring how machine learning, (a type of artificial intelligence based on patterns and inference, using algorithms and statistical models) will transform mapping, let’s briefly review some of the numerous OSM mapping projects presented at the SOTM Conference.

Cycling

Those interested in urban and touring biking had excellent opportunities to connect, learn, and share concerns.  For instance, a group of activists from Medellin, Columbia, shared their work on mapping the cities of the Aburrá Valley, with Medellin as a core city. Drawn in part from the GEOLab Research group at the University of Antioquia, these cycling activists are using OSM to map existing infrastructure and provide visualization of safety data (including air quality), with the goal of making cycling safer and more attractive.

Likewise, representatives from Nomad Maps talked about their goal of creating a community of “NomadMappers” in Columbia, Ecuador, and Peru. They will map on both OSM and Mapillary in order to assist cyclists in their travels across the Andes Mountains.    

Members of CyclOSM presented their cycling render of Paris, which built on the excellent quality of OSM’s Paris data.  Their work differentiates bidirectional ways and dedicated lanes versus shared lanes (bike lanes are often indistinguishable from car lanes), and also pinpoints bumps and bike boxes. 

Indoor and Outdoor Walkways

Mapping pedestrian walkways and paths presents challenges. Hikar, an augmented reality app for Android, is experimenting with the use of augmented reality in conjunction with OSM.  Once restricted to England and Wales, Hikar now covers Europe and shows distance and direction. 

On-the-ground navigation for those with mobility impairments, presents a different sort of challenge.  In England, the Stockport Council initiated the ‘Mapping Mobility Stockport’ project to address navigation barriers to individuals with vision impairments or wheelchairs.  They collaborated with community members to develop strategies for negotiating such barriers, thus transforming the project into a share community effort. 

The French railway company SNCF has created a dedicated routing engine to navigate indoors and outdoors at 83 train stations in Paris.  SNCF has also incorporated landmarks (replacing certain written instructions) onto their railway station maps.           

Public Transportation

SNCF has adapted GraphHopper, used primarily for graph-based car, pedestrian, and bike navigation, to work with OSM rail data.  SNCF calls their initiative OpenRailRouting, and it has resulted in upgraded services, such as delay calculations, tunnel positioning, and distance calculation.  

In Norway, Entur maintains a national registry of data for 60 public transportation operators, using OSM as a foundation for routing.  Entur plans to broaden its scope to all of Europe and will continue to build on its use of OSM, OpenTripPlanner, and other open-source platforms to do so. 

Community Development and Disaster Preparedness

In central Scotland, the Falkirk Council used OSM to create Our Falkirk.  Poverty estimates run as high as 25% in Falkirk, and their map-based tool provides information to the community on local services that provide social support, food supplies, financial advice, and digital access.

OSM is being used to determining the need for bridge infrastructure in the Kingdom of eSwatini.  To determine the need for additional bridges, the region’s baseline accessibility (to a bridge) is compared to its accessibility during a flood or rising water levels.  Similarly, OSM is being used in Nepal and in the Philippines, to strengthen disaster preparedness. 

Artificial and learned intelligence Support Each Other on OSM

The inclusion of the Academic track in the annual SOTM Conference provides a look at some interesting research on the effects of mapping on volunteers, using YouthMappers as subjects.  According to Patricia Solis, such research suggests that the humanitarian nature of many mapping tasks often softens the grinding task of learning a new technology, making it a more compelling challenge.  Because humanitarian mapping often awakens volunteers to the ordeals in other people’s lives, the experience itself often leads to more positive outcomes, such as satisfaction or a newly found interest in technology.  Research also indicates that the experience of mapping helps develop valuable geospatial skills in young people, skills may help them land an internship or job offer, according to Patricia Solis and Sushil Rajagopalan.  They indicated that the effects are particularly strong for females.

Equipping a younger generation with geospatial skills, already highly valued in the marketplace, may be greatly enhanced by the expansion of OSM’s functionalities with machine learning.  In July of 2019, Facebook released Map With AI, which is now available to OSM and provides access to Tanzania (as well as Mexico, Nigeria, Uganda, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan). 

Map With AI comes with an AI-powered OSM editing tool called RapiD, which acts as its interface.  Like flipping a switch to turn on the overhead lights, mappers will use RapiD to review the model’s identified navigation patterns of paved and unpaved roads and paths (as opposed to dried up riverbeds) and highlight them on OSM.  The identified, or “predicted,” roads and paths are given a confidence rating, which is expressed as a magenta overlay.  Existing roads show up with a white overlay.

Tested by Facebook and OSM reviewers on 300,000 miles of unmapped roads in Thailand, the Map With AI has been shown to accelerate the process of road mapping. Given the extent of the numerous mapping projects, and the education it is providing in geospatial skills, Facebook’s AI model can only enhance and accelerate OSM’s crowdsourcing work around the globe.

ICPD25 in Nairobi was an amazing event and I was extremely proud to run a Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) mapathon there on behalf of United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). 9500 people from 170 countries attended the summit, from heads of state and UN employees to grassroots activists. 

I attended some amazing talks and workshops which included huge declarations from the Kenyan President to end FGM by 2022 and much smaller events. I met with familiar activists I’d spoken to before plus many new people with additional opportunities for collaboration. Some highlights for me included:

·       Rebeca Gyumi talking about her social media campaign against child marriage and FGM in our mapathon

·       Finally meeting Francis from The Network against Female Genital Mutilation (NAFGEM), who was talking at the Human Library about the value of generational dialogues in eliminating FGM

·       Hearing Tony Mwebia talk about his initiative #MenEndFGM and helping many of this group get started with mapping in Kenya

·       Meeting again Laura Mugeha and her colleagues from Women in GIS – doing amazing visualisations on gender – and persuading Laura to do a talk about Crowd2Map at State of the Map Africa, Ivory Coast (November 22-24) 

Plus very many contacts to follow up with. We have a busy few weeks through to the end of 2019 and will be proactively looking to get in touch with our new contacts as we move into 2020.

If you didn’t make it to the mapathon in Nairobi there is more information on the work we do with the support of volunteers around the world, on this site.  There is another online mapathon planned for 1^st December and on 3^rd December we will hold a mapathon in London, UK.

We’re excited to bring mapping and our FGM campaign work to a global audience at the Nairobi Summit on ICPD25 in November. On Thursday 14^th we will be running a workshop including a Mapathon which is open to attend to those already registered to the Summit.

2019 marks 25 years since the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) agreed a much-needed Programme of Action must be put in place, established by governments from 179 nations. The Programme of Action is an acknowledgement and understanding that reproductive health, women’s empowerment and gender equality form the pathway to sustainable development. This message is important globally and critical for communities across Tanzania and other East African nations and is being explored at the Summit.

Crowd2Map founder Janet Chapman along with Hope for Girls and Women founder Rhobi Samwelly will be delivering a mapping workshop at the Summit to share the impact this volunteer-driven pioneering digital activity is playing on the ground to help protect girls who are at risk of, or who have been through, FGM. With mapping also having been found to have a positive impact beyond FGM, this is an important stage on which to share the significance of the work we do.

We now have contributors from all over the world who are committed to bringing more visual guidance to those trying to reach and rescue vulnerable girls, as well as those wishing to escape challenging situations and beliefs. Tanzanians complete the process adding additional local knowledge and detail to the work delivered from afar.  With our effort in Tanzania proven to have been so successful, we are now keen to extend our mapping work to protect girls and women in communities further afield.

It promises to be an impressive event and we’re grateful and enthused to have this opportunity to bring mapping in front of a wider audience. Whilst there we will also meeting with FGM activists and looking to strengthen and broaden our network by meeting with other delegates.

Those wishing to attend need to be registered. More information about the Nairobi summit can be found at https://www.nairobisummiticpd.org/.

Follow us on social media to get updates on the run up and during the event. If you’re unable to attend the workshop but would like to meet at the Summit, please email j.chapman@tanzdevtrust.org.

Crowd2Map with a OpenStreetMap is inviting you to join us from every where in the world for a birthday mapathon! On August 10th, 11am GMT, we will celebrate 15 years of OSM, with local mapping parties & online!

Join & support us from wherever you are!

You’re invited to map one of these tasks, although any point added in Tanzania with the tag #TanzaniaDevelopmentTrust or #crowd2map in the 24 hour period from 11am GMT on Saturday 10th August until Sunday 11th August will count.

The database shows the number of contributions with the #tanzaniadevelopmenttrust and #crowd2map hashtag from January 1 to July 31, 2019. The data is generated with osm-stats from American Red Cross.

Hashtag	crowd2map	tanzaniadevelopmenttrust
Roads Added (km)	1080.52	3504.11
Roads Modified (km)	377.1	1281.36
Buildings Added	11126	657024
Buildings Modified	2300	36827
Waterways Added (km)	71.88	183.15
POIs Added	165	574