News — 16 September, 2018

Ripples of HOT Micro Grant's Impact on UniqueMappersTeam Community

Taking off from 12th June,2017,as UniqueMappersTeam and a Local community of OpenStreetMap in Nigeria, I looked forward to some support to empower and sustain the community to a more active humanitarian mapping responding to vulnerable communities using openstreetmap.There was a dare need of devices such as smartphones,laptops,projector and internet data access to drive the passion of volunteers to work ,and then came the call for microgrant 2018 application from the global community in February 2018,to pursue HOT Project of Mapping the difference 2018.Our Micro Grant application listed as our focus the following : participation in mapping HOT high priority task for disaster response and disaster risk reduction, mapping of our campus community, creating and supporting new Youth mappers chapters in other universities, carrying out fieldwork and creating geospatial data to support academic research in the area of oils Spill disaster vulnerable communities in Rivers, Flood vulnerable communities in Port Harcourt Metropolis ,Mapping Malaria Parasitimia in Rivers State as well as reaching out to private and public sector who needs the OSM data for sustainable development planning. We needed these equipment and other support to achieve these objectives.

#Impact on OSM data Contribution and Disaster Risk Reduction

With the progressive receipt of the micro grant, these objectives are being met. The amazing and striking impact of the grant on our project is the continuous and exponential increase of total edit contributions of geospatial data on OSM from UniqueMappersTeam with hashtag #uniquemappersteam which rose from about 4000 to 31,000 within the last three months of the micro grant project. HOT Micro grant 2018 is so impacting that we can now boost of 500 edits as average daily contribution checking from the missing maps leader board. There is greater enthusiasm and passion to map for people in need, not just as fun but as a necessary task by community members with availability of laptop, phone device and data subscription.

It is also amazing to see the pulling effect of new members to the community and so our focus shifted to giving attention to new members, who needs training and guide to start mapping on OSM .and existing members who are regularly engaged into OSM fight and mapathon to keep tracking their contribution. We now have our female community members as the global leading contributors on #letgirlsmap leader board:

1)Valerie143(Odeam Valerie) with more than 8000 edits (5000 edits contributed in a 2-weeks Community OSMfight to emerge as the mapping queen of UniqueMappersTeam)

2)Gorgeous Ella(Emmanuella Ebere) with more than 5000 edits taking second position on Leaderboard of Letgirlsmap globally

4)lovel4all (Godslove Ishola)with more than 2000 edits taking 4th position on the same leader board of letgirlsmap and the leaderboard of UniqueMappersTeam

5)Emmanuel Chidera Ikeogu ,a current final year male student of Computer science and the director,technical of UniqueMappersTeam takes 2nd position on the UniqueMappersTeam leader board with more than 5000 edits.

Final Result of a 2-weeks OSMfight in July,2018

These Micro grant induced OSMfight has impacted on the community such that the missing map leader board has become a daily watch for ranking of our daily, weekly and monthly contributions as well as knowing identifying active mappers of our team. The impact is so glaring, that, even, our senior friends, mentors and university dons have joined the mapping race, with targets of beating those ahead. I was so excited, when, Professor J. E. Umeuduji (our faculty Advisor) came up to join the mapping race and currently rose from less than 50 edits to more than 1600 edits within the last two months of the Micro grant impact.

Most of these contributions cut across HOT priority mapping task projects in more than 40 countries as remote mapping contributions, in addition to local mapping in Nigeria, which includes MSF task in Niger State, mapping around the University of Port Harcourt campus and team members’ villages. Our mapping has also increased to cover vulnerable flood communities in Port Harcourt.

#Impact on Female Gender Inclusion in Mapping Community

There is a fierce but friendly and gender sensitive and competitive passion among community members. about who maps the highest edits on OSM! Who takes the lead and who remains active, all induced by the HOT Microgrant 2018! And the female community mappers no longer take it for granted as they want to keep the pace leading on the leader board of UniqueMappersteam. Valerie143 and Gorgeous Ella are leading examples of this aggressive mapping among the female team members. This has also impacted on the new members’ inflow in the past 2 months’ majority being the female volunteers.

Exclusive female Mapathon August,2018

#Impact on YouthMappers chapter expansion in Nigeria and Africa

As part of our focus, with the micro grant support, we have reached out other universities to create and mentor new youth mappers chapter. We created and travelled to Abia State university to support AbsuMappersTeam in the month of July. We are also reaching out to 5 other new chapters we have created using WhatsApp chat groups. Just few weeks ago, as a result of our social media presence and advert for our training, we batched into a student contact from University of Zimbabwe, we have leveraged on to start up a Youth Mappers chapter and with the whatsapp chat group, we have mobilized about 44 volunteers who are signing up OSM as volunteer mappers. We have also reached out and organized training for LionMappersTeam-Enugu Campus and IgnatiusMappersTeam-Port Harcourt, linking them up to participate in micro grant community knowledge sharing webinar. After series of WhatsApp group knowledge sharing on OSM,Ijeoma Ladele had to travel more than 700km through the rough South Western Nigeria Road from University of Ibadan, Oyo State .to UniqueMappersTeam-University of Port Harcourt for one-one Impact training with the team coordinator,Ijeoma,an advocate of female gender mapping inclusion, will be raising an exclusive passionate team of female OSM Volunteers in Ibadan via the support of UniqueMappersTeam impact factor.

Training the Trainers @IgnatiusMappersTeam-YouthMappers Chapter

In the same vein, Mamman Ali,a student of Geography Department, University of Maiduguri, travelled more than 800km through the rugged North-South Nigerian road to UniqueMapersTeam-University of Port Harcourt, for a training, establishing contact with the Team coordinator, which led to the emerging UniMaidMappersTeam YouthMappers Chapter with more than 60 members being mentored remotely by UniqueMappersTeam. Other emerging Youthmappers teams includes; FutoMappersTeam-Federal University of Technology, owerri, ImsuMappersTeam-Imo State University, Owerri, AwkaMappersTeam-Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka etc. With more than 150 Universities spatially distributed in various parts of the country, Nigeria has great potentials and the capacity for a sustainable growth and expansion of OSM community beyond her boarders. The UniqueMappersTeam Micro grant impact story is the genesis!

Victor N. Sunday(UniqueMappersTeam-Coordinator/Mentor) and Mrs Ijeoma Ladele from University of Ibadan, for one-one impact training

#Impact on field work and academic research track

Our focus on academic research support is also in progress, as we have carried out field work for GPS data collection covering the 23 local government area of Rivers State to collect data on primary health care centers for mapping of malaria parasitemia for a PhD research student member, more field work will continue on this project.

Our student team member is also working on Interactive web mapping of our campus as a final year project,and the microgrant 2018 is a great support on this as phone and laptop device as well as data subscription has being a tremendous support to the progress of this research.Mapping of Oils Spill and flood vulnerable communities will soon commence as we create HOT task to organize mapathon for these research. We have also by the experience and impact of this microgrant project,written and featured 4 academic track paper presentations at FOSS4G/HOTSummit 2018 to share knowledge.Watch out at the forthcoming State of the Map US Conference featuring our presentations on :

1)Mapping Accuracy in OpenStreetmap: Dealing with the Volunteer Mappers Motivation and quality Data contribution by Valerie (our mapping queen), Victor N. Sunday and Chukwunonyelum Okpala-Okaka

2)Raising and Growing Passionate OpenStreetMap Humanitarian Mappers Using Social Media and Gamification Techniques: Examples from Nigeria by Victor N. Sunday and chukwunonyelum Okpala-okaka.

#Local Partnership collaborations with UniqueMappersTeam’s Micro Grant 2018 Impact

As we took off with the micro grant project, it was necessary to share our project focus with local partners who needs to key in either as end-user of the OSM data or provide some corporate support to our efforts. During the period, we had the following local partnership outreach:

1)Transparent Earth Nigeria Ltd with a successful signing of MOU for local partnership collaboration, providing, best annual mapper’s award for the team

2)Nigerian Red Cross, Rivers State branch successful outreach with MOU negotiation in Progress

3)Ntel Nigeria communications-further outreach pending, subscribed for internet data access for 10 smartphone device used for mapping.

Reaching to Nigerian Red Cross Society, Rivers State Branch for Disaster Risk Reduction Collaboration

#Sustainable Micro grant 2018 Impact on UniqueMapperTeam Community and OSM Nigeria

The emergence of UniqueMappersTeam in the last one year and two months in the global community of OpenStreetMap has given hope for a greater participation of Nigeria’s in the sustainability of OpenStreetMap geospatial data provision in Nigeria.More So as UniqueMappersTeam became the Nigeria’s award recipient of the HOT/NetHope Micro Grant device 2018,sustainability tracking is now on course,as more awareness are being created by the laudable project activities of UniqueMappersTeam disseminated through social media platforms to stakeholders community in Nigeria and Africa. This impact has a trigger effect and confidence to foreign and local end users of OSM data as there is now a growing and sustaining community of OSM volunteers and Youthmappers ready to map for people in need ,putting more locations in Nigeria on the globally accessible map of OpenStreetMap.OSMNigeria community is fast building up with the growth and expansion of UniqueMappersTeam, the emerging Youth mappers chapters and the private partner volunteers.There is a rippling effect of HOT Micro Grant 2018 on OSM Nigeria Sustainability!!!Let’s Map our World!!!Let’s Map the difference 2018!!!Thanks to HOT Micro Grant 2018!!! Let’s go mapping in OSM with hashtags #UniqueMappersTeam #Microgrant2018 #mapthedifference2018.