Youthmappers capacity building in Uganda: just a beginning, from an end.
Over the last seven months, there has been an addition of five new chapters to the Global YouthMappers network! With their respective names:
These Universities became part of the Youthmappers network because they aligned to one of the objectives of “providing structure and guidance to the individual, student-led mapping efforts that add needed data to OpenStreetMap.
With the great work that had been done by the local OpenStreetMap community and the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap project in Uganda by reaching out to these Universities and involving them in mapping projects, the interest and capacity needed to be maintained.
The above University Chapters now have a structured student membership formation, and have done mapping activities including, over 10 Mapathons with 200 student participants, research studies with development partners, in country chapter visits, and have held hangout exchanges with other chapters in Nigeria, South Africa, and Italy.
Members from some of the chapters had this to say:
"The youth mappers program has helped many of our members realise mapping as a new co-curricula activity, others have realised the value of new skills from voluntary activities - some of our new members who joined our mapathons wished they had known about this before" Nassozi Shamilah (Good Mappers - Busitema University)
"The youth mappers program has provided new skills in making data/map edits, building my networks, meeting new people, team work, and working with others to see a change especially in health" Mutenyo Joan (Mappers for Life - UCU Mbale)
"The youth mappers program has helped me interact with new people and learn new skills from other Universities in the Eastern Region of Uganda, and Gulu University" Patrick Etomet (Everlast Mappers - Kumi University)
A basis for most of the above activities was to lay a foundation and capacity for these chapters to take-off and prepare for more engaging programs that meet data needs, social challenges like HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and other Sustainable development and resilience objectives.
That was the account for last year, and now with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap’s University Club designation and activities with the Chapters, in just one month over 64 Youthmappers members from 4 Chapters have mapped a total of 37821 buildings, 11781 roads, 48902 modified ways/highways and 4575 Tiles: remotely mapping tasks on malaria elimination under the Clinton Health Access Initiative.
We look forward to more wonderful work from these chapters in Uganda together with the rest of the other Chapter networks elsewhere in the world. For more of this, and the journey in setting up YouthMappers in over 50 universities worldwide to grow a generation of young leaders, create resilient communities, and to define their world by mapping it, join the YouthMappers Webinar presentation on February 16th 2017.