Map Kibera

An Attentive Audience at the Meet-up

Introduction:

“I want to play a pivotal role in updating and sharing community generated information with the community and the world at large through citizen journalism. I say so because I witnessed an incident a few months ago during the oil shortage problem, where a CNN journalist came to Kibera slums and paid a woman stage manage some kind or a demonstration saying the price of Paraffin had gone up as he recorded her. I would like to know more about www.voiceofkibera.org so that I can challenge the perceptions and misrepresentations that Kibera goes through.” This was what Ann one of the participants had to say during the introductions session at the meet-up.

Before then, Map Kibera Trusts’ Voice of Kibera had organized a presentation in Soweto East village to engage the youth group leaders more on how they can get engaged with the platform. Having invited 30 representatives, 22 were able to turn up for the event that started at about 2:15pm on Saturday the 1^st of December. 

Preparations for the day:

Adequate arrangements by the V.O.K team were made to ensure that the days program would run smoothly hence achieving its purpose. Below was the program flow.

• Introduction of the entire Map Kibera Trust and Voice of Kibera.
• The relationship between Map Kibera Trust programs.
• The Voice of Kibera platform and how it works, what the participants think can be improved.
• Question and Answer time to enable a brain storming session for better understanding.
• Distribution of Maps on 3 themes; Education, Health and security to the line organizations that attended.
• Refreshment and Networking
• Conclusion

The voice of Kibera Presentation:

This was a step by step presentation done with Fredrick, one of the Map Kibera trust members. I could feel the mood in the hall, one with silence meaning the participants were keenly taking in what was being said. Some of the details that were shared are; How to submit a report, The ways with which you can send the report to the website, the details and importance of categories, editing, proof reading and approving or reports among others.

Fredrick Doing the Presentation in Soweto East

After the session Sande took over to reinforce what had been discussed even as he led the question and answer time.

Some of the questions:

• How do you ensure authenticity of the reports you collect?
• Now that we have new boundaries, what is your organization doing to that effect?
• Do you have anywhere you advertise jobs for the youths in the slums?

 Our Response to the Questions:

That when you have a report and you are not sure about its’ contends, you can get call back the person who send it to get more clarification, if the news has been covered by a 2^nd or 3^rd parties you can use that as well as using your available networks to get confirmation or more information on the same. Map Kibera is currently remapping the new boundaries by IEBC including information on the location of polling stations so that this information can be available to the locals before the elections in March 2013. We are developing a plartform under the name organizational directory that will see advertisement of opportunities a reality in the sense that those who consume contend do it for free apart from profiling organizations in Kibera on the Platform.

The meet-up that took close to 3 hours came to an end with the p

The Global Voices Summit, was a good opportunity for Map Kibera to get exposure, share and interact with different bloggers from all over the world.

On 2nd July, which was the first day of the summit, at 2pm when the Map Kibera team of Joshua Owino [KNN], Steve Oduor [KNN], Lucy Fondo [Mapper], Cosmas [map Mathare], Javin Ochieng [Map Mathare], Sande Wycliff [V.O.K], Yvonne Tiany [ Map Mathare], Vincent [Mukuru] and Kepha Ngito [Map Kibera Trust Director] took to the panel to present about map kibera trust.

Joshua and I shared how KNN, started, what we do with the limited resources we have to bring about change in our community.

Members of these different programs under map kibera trust shared in detail what they have been able to achieve in the 2- year approximate time that map kibera has existed.

Lucy Fondo speaking. Photo by @rezwan

For instance, Lucy Fondo , one of the mappers present at the summit, explained how, by the use of GPS gadgets, they have been able to map different facilities within Kibera and later been able to revise the maps in different topics that affect the community directly such as health, education, security and Water & Sanitation.

These maps have played a great role in improving the services offered by the government in these respective topics, for example, the local governing authorities have used the security map to help improve security especially around the black spots identified in the map. the map on water and sanitation has also been of great importance to the government-owned Nairobi Water Company which has relied on the map, to identify areas in Kibera hit by water shortage.

KNN on the other hand, use flip camera to make video on issues and happenings in different areas within Kibera, through the Youtube channel, www.youtube.com/kiberanewsnetwork which are linked to the map created by the mappers thus helping to identify on the map what happens at a particular place.

Sande Wycliff of Voice of Kibera explained how through ushahidi platform, they have been able to get the community members to send reports that come as text messages on the site, www.voiceofkibera.org , on events and things that take place within Kibera, the report is later verified by a team of editors and then appears on the site. which uses the map to show where a certain report was sent from.

Sande, Joshua, Steve, and Vincent on panel. Photo by @rezwan

Map Kibera also shared how the information sharing has helped improve the community and how it has been extended to slums of Mathare and Mukuru, where other young people like Cosmas, Yvonne, Javin and Vincent, who were also present at the summit, shared their experiences in these respective regions.

On 3rd of July which was the second day of the summit, Map Kibera director Kepha Ngito gave a presentation with an overview of the whole trust and it’s relation to the community where he later answered questions from participants.

Steve, KNN