The Practical Radical
Usahidi – Mapping the world one SMS at a time
Leave a Comment
Usahidi - Mapping the world one SMS at a time
I have been struggling to get my head around Usahidi, the Swahili for “witness” or “testimony.”
I knew it was created during the post-election violence in Kenya in early 2008. I had many friends who went through that terrible time, and felt equally horrified and powerless.
Tags: #ushahidi, @openstreetmap, Africa, Crisis Management, Erik Hersman, kenya, kibera, map kibera, Mapping, Text messaging, UN-HABITAT, Urban Planning
Steps into Mapping the Unmapped – via Mapping: No Big Deal
2 Comments
No big deal?? Yeah right! This is an excellent and detailed step-by-step process on how to do mapping in remote areas, and for a great purpose as well (the successful referendum held in Kenya. Check out my blog post Transparency + Accountability = Democracy, Kenya Style to see how mapping was used there).
Here are the steps in quick preview (go to the main article to see the details):
1. Season planning.
2. Try to acquire existing maps or make people create them from memory.
3. Get contacts in the area prior to your arrival.
4. Meet community leaders.
5. Find a guide who knows the area and the people.
6. Go to a local bar and have a beer. ** key to any successful mapping process! – DR
7. Go for it. Map!
8. Write a working diary.
9. Present the results to the community.
10. Finish your work.
11. Stay in touch.
Keep up the good work and keep us posted!
Doug
Mapping hardly accessible, rural areas, is always a challenge. Each area differs so you have to tackle it in its own special way. Yet some basic steps are always the same. I have written some of them down. In July, Mildred and I went mapping on Mount Elgon as contractors for the National Democratic Institute (NDI) on behalf of Map Kibera.
They needed information regarding polling stations in the area for their work on election monitoring. The information included geographic location, accessibility – both physical accessibility and the availability of cell phone service, information related to infrastructure of these stations, and speed of travel to each individual station.
Tags: @openstreetmap, Africa, Cartography, Geography, Global Positioning System, kenya, kibera, map, map kibera, Mobile phone, Mount Elgon, research, Science and Technology, Social Sciences, Technology, Youth
What it means to “get it” – Mikel Maron on Building Digital Technology for Our Planet
Leave a Comment
I am going to go out on a limb here and state that I think Mikel Maron and his crew of openstreetmap people are some of the leading experts globally in understanding how technology – specifically spatial technology – can be used in the developing world.
Why you ask? Why them? Well, because they aren’t at 10,000 feet, nor 5,000 feet, or even 500 feet — they are at ground zero. Yes, they passionately believes in technology, Mikel is a self-described techno nerd, but he, like many of the others involved in openstreetmaps movement, are on the ground seeing how technology ACTUALLY works, not how we would love it to, or how we report it to our funders to get more money, or how it works for just enough time for our research to be done (read about the hole-in-the-wall project in his blog post).
I wrote a management-nerdy blog post a while back on one of the projects they were involved in — mapkibera — and if you get past all the graphs my main message was that the people in the project were asking the right questions — basically — how can this project be sustainable past the initial “wow” phase. The answer to this question is quite simple, and one not often followed by aid agencies — the answer is “LIVE THERE”. Yup, be there, not in a hotel, or the UN compound, or the ex-pat enclave, but actually in the place you are working at. Find out where all the gnarly bits are, and then maybe it will be successful — or at least have a better chance. Parallel and just as important is WORK with the people that live there. Seems self explanatory … but something that is not always done.
And, that is what Mikel and his crew have done with mapkibera. They came for 6 months, and have stayed for a year+. They engaged the community in an asset based approach – a la John Mcknight’s Asset Based Community Development – and had the people map their community — and community which heretofore had no community accessible maps. The mapping was done on a platform developed in Kenya after the post-election violence of a couple years ago called Usahidi (you can as well read my yet unpublished blog post on this).
So, this all being said, the following blog outlines the questions he and they are asking, the possibilities and the possible pitfalls. I’ll shut up and let him speak … (but read my bolded bits to see where I think he nails it bang on) .. ok .. i will really shut up now. Promise …
Tags: Asset Based Community Development, kenya, kibera, map kibera, Mikel Maron, Non-governmental organization, Technology
Nairobi Notebook 2: The Sustainability of Good Works
4 Comments
Nairobi Notebook
NOTE: I had a wonderful lunch when i was in Nairobi with some of the people from the Map Kibera project (you can read my previous blog on this here, or go to their website mapkibera.org). What fascinated me was the stage they were at in regards to the growth of their project and their concern about assuring that the project was sustainable. This got me thinking about sustainability and NGOs. Here are my musings on the subject …
—
Just as the coin for business is, well, coins, the coin for NGOs is change. Positive change. It is what every NGO assumes it will be able to achieve when they start, and what many fail to do. The challenge often for NGOs as with for-profit companies is achieving and sustaining their success.
To achieve success an agency agency needs to plan, to plan they must have a “business model” – guidelines to better understand where they stand in relation to their own development.
One traditional for-profit model is that of the “business cycle” or “S curve”.
This model is used to understand the growth of industries and organizations. However, the S curve does not recognize key components of a healthy system – specifically the phases of destruction and renewal. A healthy forest is one that has trees grow older, die, and then become the fertilizer for the new growth. The S curve is silent on these phases of destruction and renewal. Ironically, it is the paradox of having things dies that assures the longterm sustainability of a healthy system.
Tags: #ushahidi, Africa, brenda zimmerman, complexity, Development, ecocycle, kibera, map kibera, Mapping, openinstreetmaps, Youth
Doug Ragan
practicalradical
The Practical Radical 