The Cause

Narrator: “In 2010, after an earthquake in Haiti, online volunteers became part of a movement that is creating a free and open digital map of the world.”

Mikel Maron: “In an emergency you just need data from wherever you have it.”

Justine MacKinnon: “It's important that the information is open and available to everyone because some situations we don't know it's going to happen, it's a surprise.”

Narrator: “What is Remote Mapping?

Shadrock Roberts: “Remote mapping is sort of an interesting new phenomena that's happened since 2010 in Haiti. We saw a real push of volunteers online; to help create map data where none existed before.”

Narrator: “Map data helps humanitarian efforts; not just in a crisis. It helps communities like Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya prepare, develop, and respond to needs at the local level. It's a big job and not every place is mapped like we may believe.

Kepha Ngito: “Developing or establishing data is a very huge step in the process of changing things. And that is when the maps become very useful.”

Dale Kunce: “When the typhoon happened we realized there were no good maps of the Philippines. so we partnered with the OpenStreetMap team to help them and help us build out a baseline map of the buildings.”

Narrator: “Think of OpenStreetMap as Wikipedia for maps.”

Mikel Maron: “OpenStreetMap is a free and open map of the entire world. It's primarily edited by volunteers. We create everything in the commons it's completely open and available for anyone to contribute and anyone to use.”

Narrator: “How do volunteers help?”

Shadrock Roberts: “The way that a volunteer can help is by looking at satellite imagery and picking out different predefined objects and saying okay I can see a house I can trace the edges of the house. I see a road I can trace the line of that road I see a forest I can trace the edge of that forest.”

Narrator: “MapGive is making it easier for new online volunteers to take those first steps in helping build an open, free map of the world and become digital humanitarians.”

Narrator: “Learn how to map in three steps. Get an OpenStreetMap account. Practice mapping. Then, get connected with a task on the MapGive site. You'll get the skills to map... what you'll give helps communities around the world.”

Joshua Campbell: “The value of the geographic data created in OpenStreetMap for humanitarian response has already been compelling. The amount of information that has been produced and the utility it has rendered to the humanitarian community is a game—changer in humanitarian response.”

Dale Kunce: “For the typhoon response we had almost 16 hundred volunteers do something like 4.5 million edits to the base map just for the Philippines. And those 16 hundred volunteers represents some 3 to 4 years of dedicated mapping that one person would be able to do.”

Narrator: “We're asking the question: what if there were more online Mapgivers?”

Joshua Campbell: “What could happen if we had ten times the amount of volunteers 50 times the amount of volunteers how many areas could we map? How much good could we do in this process?”

Narrator: “Let's find out how much good we can do. MapGive today.”