Every year the Classy Awards recognize the most innovative and impactful social programs in the world. Classy, a fundraising platform for social impact organizations, presented the ten 2017 Classy Award winners that were chosen from hundreds of nominees at the Collaborative, which took place from June 13 to June 15 in Boston, Massachusetts. The Collaborative is a three-day experience presented by the Classy team to connect the social sector and share breakthrough solutions to the world’s toughest problems, culminating with a celebration of the Classy Award winners.
Classy CEO and co-founder, Scot Chisholm, addressed the crowd, including 100 finalists, with the following message, “You may not recognize everyone. You may not know exactly what they do, but I guarantee you that every person in this room is in some way impacting the world in a positive way.”
Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team
To highlight each initiative and show the breadth of social innovation genius and passion, I will spotlight each of the ten winners of the 2017 Classy Awards on the Communications Rebel blog in a series of posts in no particular order. First up is the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), which uses data-sharing technology and collaborative cartography to create maps for areas affected by natural and man-made disasters.
With accurate geographical information, humanitarian organizations can reach more people in need and reduce the number of overlooked survivors of natural disasters. When major disaster strikes anywhere in the world, HOT rallies a huge network of volunteers to create the maps online that enable responders to reach those in need. According to HOT, many of the poorest and most vulnerable places in the world do not exist on any map. To date over 3,500 Missing Maps volunteers have collectively made 12 million edits to OpenStreetMap and put 7.5 million people on the map.
Supporting community mapping projects around the world
HOT supports community mapping projects around the world and assists people to create their own maps for socio-economic development and disaster preparedness. Some of their latest projects include:
- LEGIT: Supporting Decentralization in Liberian Cities
- The “Crowdsourcing Non-Camp Refugee Data Through OpenStreetMap” Project
- Disaster Management Early Warning and Decision Support Capacity Enhancement Project in Indonesia in collaboration with USAID, BNPB, and InAWARE
Hosting mapping parties to create geospatial map data
HOT also regularly hosts mapathons, or mapping parties. A mapathon is one of the most time-efficient methods of creating geospatial map data, through the digitization of building footprints from satellite imagery. Participants sit together for a given time and map assigned areas using the Tasking Manager, a tool that can be used to coordinate for a collaborative, remote mapping project.
The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) Indonesia latest mapathon included students from the University of Indonesia’s (UI) Department of Geography and ran from June 5 to 7, 2017. UI, one of Indonesia’s leading universities, has been among HOT Indonesia’s academic partners in carrying out projects involving youths and academia.
Mapping to eliminate malaria
Mapping has not only proven critical in disaster response but also in long-term social impact projects like eliminating malaria.
HOT reports on their website that their engaged over 100 youth mappers in Uganda from February to April 2017. The students came from 5 different universities participating in the Malaria Elimination Mapping campaign to identify and map populated places in an area of interest covering over 500,000 square kilometers in Southern Africa, South East Asia and Central America to support the Clinton Health Access Initiative’s malaria program. Many of the students who participated in the program felt it was their chance to help eradicate the global problem which according to statistics is the leading cause of death in Uganda.
After three months of competitive mapping among the chapters, the Youth Mappers in Uganda have made over 5,600,000 map edits mapping over 800,000 buildings. The mapping for malaria elimination campaign continues and the HOT team encourages everyone to contribute by picking and mapping tasks at http://bit.ly/2miQUyZ.
Featured image by HOT showing YouthMappers during the ‘Mapping to End Malaria’ Challenge.
