Maps have emerged as an important asset in publicly revealing data and information needed for development efforts at the community, national, regional and international level. They have become a useful way of providing and finding information on what exists and where.   Private companies like Google for instance have been collaborating with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) to help unveil the power of statistics in the region. They have been working with UNECA to provide train the trainer events throughout the African continent, which can aid the development of collection and use of statistics using not only mobile applications but Google Map Maker, Google Earth Google Maps, Google fusion tables, and Public Data Explorer.  This is also proving useful for mapping of the vast African landscape is in the face of lack of street names and route numbers for instance. Local knowledge is key to this type of mapping for development effort.

The team at Ushahidi have adapted their mobile platform for crisit reporting and mapping for use in the situation following the devastating earthquake in Haiti:

http://haiti.ushahidi.com/

We encourage you to spread the word about this tool: Anyone in or outside of Haiti can use this tool via the web or on a mobile phone to make reports with voice, text or video; the reports will then be mapped and sources verified.  Ushahidi are hoping this adapted version of the tool, that's been used successfully in the recent Kenyan election crisis and the DRC war crisis, to help shepard people donation to relief efforts and mapping services to people urgently in need. 

In the most recent Technology Quarterly from The Economist, 5 of NetSquared's previous Featured Projects are featured for their innovative application of mapping tools for social benefit work.

We were recently contacted by the Tactical Technology Collective, which describes itself as:

... An international NGO that provide human rights  advocates with guides, tools, training and consultancy to help them develop the skills and tactics they need to increase the impact of their campaigning.

They were hoping that NetSquared (that's us) would let you (that's you) know that they've got some guides and toolkits available online, and that these guides and toolkits might be of some interest to you.

Check it:

Being a Featured N2Y3 project has proven to be quite important to Green Map System. Taking part helped us realize so much more about the potential of the Open Green Map – not only as a platform for sharing local information, but also for transforming it into global interaction. 

If 2008 was the year of mapping software (as we saw unfold at N2Y3), I predict that 2009 will be the year of the connective algorithm widget thingie. It will be this year that we'll see the rise in popularity and development of services and software intended to bring people, organizations, resources, capital, and other social assets together. If Amazon and Netflix can, for the most part, understand that if I like X and Y, then I'll probably like Z, there's no reason why - by way of cataloging and tagging - various widget won't be starting to tell my nonprofit and me that if we're invested in X and providing Y, then Z has person-power, money, or time to volunteer to our collective mission.

Are you interested in using online maps to help tell your story, communiticate about your services, or show supporters your work?  Well, Google.org is accepting applications for its Geo Challenge Grants.

Learn more at Google.org

With this program, Google.org hopes to enable more nonprofit organizations to leverage the power of maps to enhance thier work and impact.

I talk to Wendy Brawer and Thomas Turnbull about the origins of Green Map System (greenmap.org) and what they to accomplish when they launch the Open Green Map (opengreenmap.org) in the coming months.

Hi everyone, I'm Lela and I am co-executive director of NiJeL.org - Community Impact Through Mapping and an organizer of the Phoenix Netsquared group. I'm thrilled to be attending and I'm particularly excited to meet with the other mapping groups participating. If anyone has time for a mapping sidebar (maybe at the bar) let me know.

At NiJeL, we are working with groups around the world and here in the US to develop web and paper-based maps to fundraise, advocate, understand community problems, and document results to diverse audiences. We are committed to open source mapping techniques and we also train organizations and help them conduct participatory mapping.

As there seem to be so many projects at N2Y3 that involve a mapping component, I though I would introduce myself and make some connections.

My mind is rather blown with some of the latest developments in online mapping, having just returned from Where 2.0 in San Francisco.

My background is in Drupal development, and I've done a lot with the Google Map module. You can see some of the stuff at the beta of Green Map's project for N2Y3 - the Open Green Map. If anyone has questions about how to do this, I'd love to get a mapping session going in the hack room at N2Y3.