Sophie Mower
Since her career began, Sophie's work has continued to revolve around impact for social good - she has worked in international development for 8 years and community development for 12 years. Sophie is particularly interested in the intersection between people and technology, and uses her skills in human-centered design and design thinking to ensure programs are designed specifically for sustained impact to influence positive change at a community level. Presently, Sophie is the Senior Manager for Strategic Engagement & Growth at the Eastern & Southern Africa Open Mapping Hub. Her role is to build and strengthen regional partnerships, mobilise contributions to OpenStreetMap through strengthening our vibrant and dedicated network of volunteers, and develop innovative approaches to regional granting methods.
Sophie joined the HOT team in April 2020 but has been contributing to the HOTs mission as a volunteer since 2017. Sophie’s background is in community development and Inclusive Innovation. Her previous experience includes establishing a Maker Space at the Bahir Dar Institute of Technology in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, and co-founding the First Steps Project, a UK-based non-for-profit that ran workshops and training programs for young people living in areas of deprivation.
Intervention
The Open Mapping Hub Eastern and Southern Africa, presents insights and learnings from our Open Mapping Grants program in the region. Through this program, local organizations and groups of mappers identified local challenges and designed projects that utilized open mapping processes and tools to address these challenges. In this talk, we will showcase insights in setting up a granting program, and present our learning from funding, and supporting the implementation of 8 projects, across 3 implementation themes in 5 countries across Eastern and Southern Africa.
We will discuss key themes of this granting program such as project selection, community engagement, local knowledge and context awareness, capacity development efforts, collaboration strategies involving diverse stakeholders, data quality and data sharing, and impact evaluation through outcome documentation. The presentation invites participants to leverage these learnings and insights to implement open mapping grants and projects in their own regions, addressing local challenges.