08-20, 14:30–14:50 (Europe/Rome), Auditorium B
Our digital champions project in Tanzania has transformed the lives of 353 women who had never used a smartphone before into confident advocates of mapping in their extremely marginalised communities. They have delivered training to over 9000 women in these villages and reported over 470 cases of gender based violence in their villages to the police and social services who have then used the maps to find and protect these women. Giving local women and youth the digital tools to protect their sisters in their communities is an extremely cost effective, long term solution to build up our mapping community and make it more inclusive, and share lessons learnt
We will talk about the digital champions project which has transformed the lives of 353 women who had never used a smartphone before into confident advocates of mapping in their extremely marginalised communities. They have delivered training to over 9000 women in these villages and reported over 470 cases of gender based violence in their villages to the police and social services who have then used the maps to find and protect these weomen. We will show giving local women and youth the digital tools to protect their sisters in their communities is an extremely cost effective, long term solution to build up our mapping community and make it more inclusive, and share lessons learnt
digital divide, inclusion, gender, Africa,
Affiliation –Tanzania Development Trust/Crowd2Map Tanzania
Chair of Tanzania Development Trust and founder, Crowd2Map. Crowd2Map Tanzania is a crowdsourced mapping project with Tanzania Development Trust putting rural Tanzania on the map. Since 2015, we have been adding schools, hospitals, roads, buildings and villages to OpenStreetMap, an open source map available to all, with the help of over 17,500 volunteers worldwide and 1600 on the ground in Tanzania. With minimal budget and no staff we have so far added over 6 million buildings and trained community mappers in 26 areas of Tanzania.