Map Kibera

You may have seen a lot of action from @PrimozKovacic today on Twitter. That’s because Map Kibera is set to facilitate Map Mukuru!

In 2010, Map Kibera worked with HIV Free Generation and Emory University to offer training in GPS data collection and OpenStreetMap (OSM) tools to youth engaged in health asset mapping. In previous years, the HIV Free Generation and Emory team had worked with a large mapping firm to produce maps of health assets in the area. The team soon realized that capacity for data collection and mapping of the area needed to be built locally – enter Map Kibera.

Our team facilitated a brief 3 day training and followed up with some data collection and OSM support in the following weeks. During that time, we were impressed by the enthusiasm and skills of the youth in Mukuru (view their work in OSM here).

In late 2010, when the Map Kibera mappers were awarded a UNHABITAT Youth Fund grant we immediately thought of Mukuru. We had kept in touch with Vincent Mutuku and Moses Wahor, two of the star mappers from Mukuru. They had been asking when we could come back to Mukuru. We reached out to them again and they were excited to continue mapping their community.

Mukuru is made up of 3 distinct areas – Mukuru kwa Ruben, Mukuru kwa Njenga and Kayaba. The 2010 mapping only focused on Mukuru kwa Njenga and the health assets in that area. Our challenge for the coming months is to map the entire 3 areas based on community priorities.

The first planning meeting for Map Mukuru was held on 29^th June 2011 at Map Kibera office. The meeting was attended by Vincent and Moses (the two Mukuru coordinators), Kibera Mappers and Map Kibera management.

During the meeting, the team discussed the steps in the mapping process. Based on our experience in Kibera and Mathare, we identified the following questions and ideas:

1. What are we going to do?
2. We should involve community leaders who know the location
3. We need to have community meetings to identify  their views and priorities
4. We need equipment and supplies eg GPS, computers, stationary.
5. We need a base of operation (or 2-3 bases because of the size of Mukuru)
6. Identify the number of mappers in Mukuru  (again, based on the size of the area)
7. Number of local coordinators – we have 2 so far!
8. Decide on a Time frame – (which is 5 months as outlined in the Youth Fund proposal)
9. Be sure to gather feedback from the community after the first mapping
10. We need to print maps and distribute them to the community (Hard copies)

We agreed that the Kibera mappers will provide overall leadership, experience and training, but the people of Mukuru people will map their own villages.

Between June 29^th and August 1^st, Vincent and Moses identified two operational bases in Mukuru (at Goal Kenya and St. Mary’s Church).  They also set about mobilizing important stakeholders, including the local administration in the area (District Commissioners, District Officers, Chiefs). They also approached over 100 youth groups, NGOs and women’s groups in the areas to determine their interest in the mapping project. All the community mobilization efforts paid off and the 1^st community forum today attracted 150 guests! We’ll be holding a second forum on Friday.

Keep your eyes on the blog for further updates.

Map Kibera Trust recently facilitated a 3 day training to introduce participatory digital mapping to target staff at Plan Kenya. The participants in the workshop included programme staff and ICT staff from the Kenya Country office and regional offices around the country. Participants came from Homabay, Kisumu, Kilifi, Kwale, Tharaka, Machachos, Bondo, the Kenya Country Office and the Urban Programme (Nairobi). Their backgrounds ranged from ICT support staff, to Child Rights & Gender Advisor, to M&E Coordinator, to programme staff in 4 of Plan’s 5 focus areas (Protection and Inclusion, Health, Education and Governance).

The training was planned at the beginning of the implementation of the new Kenya country strategic plan (CSP) 2011-2015 for Plan Kenya. Building on the success of Plan Kenya’s work in Kwale on universal birth registration and also from digital mapping work with POIMapper and Map Kibera Trust, the new CSP highlights the importance of ICT in the improved efficacy of Plan’s work. Plan Kenya has chosen to place an explicit focus on participatory ICT in its work. This is in line with Plan International’s focus and leadership in ICT4D globally.

In this context, the workshop aimed to:

• Introduce participatory digital mapping theories, techniques and tools that Map Kibera Trust employs in its work
• Provide hands on experience in GPS data collection and data editing using Open Street Map
• Learn more about how Plan Kenya programmes use information and communicate
• Brainstorm ideas about how to integrate ICT into programme work

We began with an introduction to Information Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) by exploring some questions to consider before introducing ICT into programme work. The questions were (and are) meant to stimulate discussion and encourage participants to think systematically about the integration of ICT into new and existing programmes. The questions identify the reasons why you would use ICT, assess what constraints and opportunities exist in the framework you are working in, and explore how people are communicating in order to design appropriate and sustainable systems to build upon existing channels of communication. The questions are modified from Linda Raftree’s post “7 or more questions to ask before adding ICTs,” so thanks to Linda for the inspiration!

1. Why are you considering the use of ICT?

The Plan Kenya staff identified that using ICT, particularly mobile phones and the internet, has become a desired lifestyle choice that the majority of Kenyans around the country have embraced. This was an important point that the participants wished to build upon and capture in their use of ICT in various communities. The group generally agreed that ICTs are available and can be accessed by many Kenyans. The staff also mentioned that ICTs could improve communication and be used to easily mobilize communities (for example sending one SMS to many people to attend a meeting). ICTs are flexible and can improve accuracy and consistency in information, which can then be easily stored and shared. There was also mention of improved efficiency in programme work through the collection and processing of real-time information.

2. What are the programme goals or programme framework you are working within?

Most of the participants identified the new country strategic plan for the organization as the overarching framework that Plan Kenya staff are working with. The country strategic plan identifies 5 areas of focus: Health, Livelihoods, Education, Protection & Inclusion and Governance.

3. What are your specific information and communication needs?

The information needs of Plan Kenya staff members were largely related to programme work. The needs included collecting accurate data for baseline surveys for Monitoring and Evaluation and thus to assess programme impact. There were some suggestions of improving communication through digitizing information that can more easily be shared to large numbers of people. The group suggested that this could improve accountability to other staff members, donors and to beneficiaries in communities. ICT can also improve the ability of Plan Kenya staff to analyze information and make decisions.

4. How are you already using information and communicating?

In order to integrate ICT into existing programmes within communities, it is important to know how staff members are already using information and communicating in their daily lives. The group came up with a long list of communication tools: email, internet, intranet, websites and social netoworks – namely Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace), applications (Skype, Yahoo Messenger), SMS and telephone calls, radio, and television. The group is using information during baseline data collection. Some are involved in a project that integrates SMS applications into the birth registration process in Kwale District.

5. Who are the actors involved in the particular issue you are seeking to address with ICT?

The Plan Kenya staff won’t be (and aren’t) using ICT in isolation. There are important stakeholders they work with on particular issues, programmes and projects. These include the general community – with a particular focus on youth and children. Important sub-sections of the community include teachers, school administration, Government of Kenya, civil society organizations, Plan Kenya partners (such as Childline Kenya, Community Cleaning Services), the media and private sector actors. Different groups of people use technology differently, and depending on the answer to question 1) and question 6 (below) the staff may need an ICT strategy that is diverse enough to reach the various stakeholders.

6. How do people use ICT already?

This list of the ways in which Kenyans are already using ICT is a testament to the idea that the group tapped into when answering question 1. The use of ICT in Kenya, specifically mobile phone applications, has become a lifestyle choice. Kenyans use phones for mobile money transfer, SMS, calling, accessing the internet, paying their bills, paying for goods, calling toll-free lines (e.g. Childline call centre, police hot lines) and for data collection and dissemination. Kenyans also listen to the radio, use computers, blog, email, chat, shop online, bank online, join online discussions and news groups and use various forms of social media. They do this for work, but also for pleasure. These were the means identified by the group, however this is not an exhaustive list.

7. How do people access technology already?

This was a sub-section of question 6 and the group answered: mobile phones (including GPS enabled and internet enabled phones), street phones, computer, internet connection in office and homes, internet modems, cyber cafés, radios, TVs, toll free lines, and resource centres.

8. How will you close the feedback loop and manage expectations?

How do you make sure the information you are generating, no matter the medium or tool you are using, gets back to the community? How do you promote the use of technology without seemingly presenting a silver bullet solution (even if you don’t intend to do so)?

These questions were answered in several ways. One idea about both closing the feedback loop and managing expectation was to network  with other organizations and partners in the community to share information and raise awareness about the use of ICT and the opportunities and limitations of ICT4D projects.

Another option for closing the feedback loop was to both collect and disseminate information on popular social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

A third suggestion was to close the feedback loop and manage expectations through an informed resource person and/or resource centers and staff having sessions with the community.

Finally, there was the suggestion to start the integration of ICT in development work by outlining and communicating clear expectations and at the end have feedback sessions to monitor the whole process.

9. What is your sustainability plan?

The final question, and likely the most difficult (we only had a one hour brainstorming session and did not expect participants to come up with final answers to this question but simply consider it as an important component to any project with an ICT component).

One idea was to equip community members, and particularly youth, with skills that will be applicable beyond the program (or project) timeline. The YETAM project (youth empowerment thorough arts and media) was designed in this way and the group agreed that this design was beneficial to the young people involved in the program.

Another suggestion was to involve the beneficiaries/community in the entire process of choosing/customizing appropriate ICT tools that suit their needs and for further development so that it is community owned process and will in theory continue beyond the project/program lifecycle. Other ideas included:

• Build partnership with Government and NGOs.
• Integrate fund raising or income generating activities into the project.
• Use affordable technology (free and open source)
• Ensure follow-up mechanisms are built into the project

We discussed the use of mapping, open information and ICTs for development. We also used two of the three training days to focus on hands-on training and skills building. We facilitated training in handling the GPS devices, collecting data and using Java Open Street Map (JOSM) and Potlatch to record open spatial information into the OpenStreetMap databases. As we’ve found in the past, the hands on training is exciting and motivating. The theorietical discussions, combined with the practical field work inspired discussion and debate on ideas on how to integrate participatory digital mapping andICTs into programme work.

The following are ideas generated by the Plan Kenya staff:

• Ushahidi could be useful for referral partners mapping and identifying the hot spots of child abuse
• Use of SMS for communication with hearing and speech impaired within the community
• Using reports and sharing the same information to various media channels. E.g. PPM a in-house system that is used to track and monitor information and projects progress
• In governance as a tool for enhancing social accountability, where ICT can be used to track projects
• Digitization of data collection e.g. in sponsorship (especially photography), child abuse hotspots
• Involving children in participatory community mapping by mapping schools using walking papers
• Using blogging as a tool for youth to document governance issues in the new good governance project for the Urban Programme
• In Kilifi the team is doing a 2 year study on Open Defecation Free villages and health outcomes. They could use mapping and spatial statistics to document findings.
• Mapping and other ICT4D tools could be used to document and share participatory activities that Plan already undertakes, such  as transect walks and participatory situational analyses

The training ended with a note of caution – the team recognized the potential tension between the processes that are needed for ownership of a community map (and any other ICT4D project) and the haste of development partners to use the budget and report progress to donors. In this case, many projects (ICT4D, mapping and any other project) may “leave the community behind.”

It is thus important to ask the following questions and consider the answers carefully when designing projects:

• For whom are we doing the mapping (or any project really)? And whose map is it?
• Of what use is the (spatial) information, what will it compliment?

After another successful workshop with Plan Kenya, we look forward to building on the excitement and enthusiasm generated during the training! Let’s see some of the great ideas turned into reality!

Cross posted on my blog.

Digital storytelling and new media can be a powerful catalysts for change. In areas where access to internet is limited for most people, introducing new media as an effective means to communicate issues can be a challenge.

Young people in Mathare own mobile phones and have a facebook and email accounts, however the majority of Mathare residents do not use new media or online means to share information. As highlighted in this video Information Sharing by young Mathare residents, word of mouth is still the most powerful medium for information sharing in Mathare.

“Tell me a story, and I will tell you mine. Word of mouth has so much power to make and build a nation”

The team acknowledged these challenges but thought it worth while to experiment with new media in Mathare, as had been done in Kibera. The new media training programme in Mathare was built based on the experience of the Map Kibera team in designing and developing a web-based information sharing site.  The information sharing site for Kibera utilizes the Ushahidi platform for ‘crowdsourcing’ information. In this instance, crowdsourcing refers to providing a channel for information from the general public to be published openly on the internet. The site, Voice of Kibera, aggregates information channeled through short messaging system (SMS) messages and web based submissions and displays report on events, activities, news and other information about Kibera. The site also aggregates content from other sources on the web, including video and news reports. Despite the challenge of internet access, the team behind Voice of Kibera believes the site is an important channel for highlighting issues from Kibera. The team is actively engaged in improving the impact of the site and are excited about its growth.

A similar site initially called “Voice of Mathare” was set up for the Mathare programme. The site was meant to be a means through which Mathare residents participating in the training could highlight issues and information generated by the people of Mathare. While the technical issues were being sorted out for the Voice of Mathare site, the Mathare project coordinator and some of the participants from the other programmes took an interest blogging that was being done by others in the Map Mathare organizing team.

Through a number of discussions, the Mathare participants decided to set up a blog of their own. The Mathare Valley Blog was a thus a spin-off of the Map Mathare work.

The Mathare Valley Blog has become a central site where stories, news and videos generated by the Mathare participants are collected and shared. The blogging team meets of their own initiative and has kept up the momentum for the blog. They actively brainstorm ideas and making changes to the layout and format of the blog. The Map Mathare team provides some technical support to the bloggers and the site continues to run as an effective digital storytelling platform.

Currently the Mathare Valley Blog has 61 blog posts contributed by six different bloggers from Mathare .  Five of the six bloggers are under the age of 25 and have written a blog post for the first time on the Mathare Valley Blog.

Over the past four months (January – April) the blog has been viewed 4,466 times and has six subscribers, plus many other online followers. One Plan USA staff member who runs a blog on ICT and development picked up activity on the Mathare Valley blog and wrote her own post “Mathare Valley is blogging.”

Success stories

The blog has attracted considerable attention within and outside Nairobi and Kenya. There have been numerous success stories that have resulted from the blog. The first is a result of this story, entitled “Attempted rape by a neighbor”. Simon, the author, followed up on the blog post and wrote about the girl’s attempt to contact the authorities in this post. After reading these two posts, a human rights activist from Nairobi contacted Simon and was put in touch with the young girl from the story. The activist then accompanied the girl to the police station to follow up on her case and assure a report was properly filed and acted upon.

The second success story was sparked by this blog post about Mr. Ndeti from Mathare who speaks fluent German and has started teaching German to interested students. The blog post was forwarded to the Goethe Institute in Nairobi. A staff member from the Goethe institute read the story, took an interest in Mr. Ndeti’s work and was put in touch with the teacher. Through this interaction, the Institute donated books and material to support the initiative started by Mr. Ndeti in Mathare.

One of the young bloggers (and videographers) has attracted the attention of an international newspaper published by the Rebel Film Board. The newspaper was impressed by his writing and has offered to publish a version of his post on “The Vice of Violence in Mathare” in their publication, which circulates in print in Toronto and Mathare.

In a short time, the blog has proven an extremely effective platform for young residents from Mathare to highlight their stories. The blog facilitates online – and more importantly – offline dialogue and action on issues of importance to the residence of Mathare. The Mathare Valley Blog is most importantly an initiative of Mathare residents themselves.

To provide the participants with some ideas about other options in terms of new media, some basic training on the use of the Ushahidi Voice of Mathare platform was provided to some of the Map Mathare project participants. The Voice of Kibera team conducted a number of hands-on trainings with 8-10 Mathare participants. The participants were interested in the platform and learning from the experience of the Voice of Kibera members, but did not take-up the software as we saw in Kibera. We therefore agreed to provide technical support for the blogging platform as a central online information focal point for the Map Mathare initiative. We were careful not to impose the original ideas of New Media in Mathare and have adhered to the original methodology agreed upon by the team with support from Plan Kenya and CCS. This was a community driven approach from which the technical and coordination team “leads from behind”. We are and continue to be flexible when it comes to programming in Mathare.