Learn to use simple digital humanitarian tools and meet the community

This will be our first meetup! Our goal is to teach non-techies how to use some very simple but powerful tools to help in worldwide disaster relief. No programming or any special skills required. If you can use a browser, you can help world wide disaster relief, or learn to use these powerful tools for disasters at home.

The two tools we are going to learn are Open Street Map, and Ushahidi.

Open Street Map (OSM) is like Wikipedia, but for maps. It's also a lot easier to use. We will go over how to use it for the first 15 minutes, and then give you some time to make edits that will go live on the map, instantly. OSM has been around for over a decade, but made major waves in the disaster relief world during Hurricane Yolanda in the Philippines. The map of the most affected areas were remote and good maps didn't exist, hindering the relief effort. OSM put out a call for volunteers to use their amazing tools to fix that. All told, over 3,000 people added 3 million edits, which was invaluable to disaster relief workers in the area. Here is a link to see what the map looked like before, and after volunteers like you decided to help.

http://pierzen.dev.openstreetmap.org/hot/leaflet/OSM-Compare-before-after-philippines.html

The second tool is Ushahidi. Ushahidi means 'testimony' or 'witness' in Swahili. In 2007, widespread violence broke out during election season. The government decreed that the media wasn't allowed to talk about it, which made a dangerous situation even worse. So, a blogger and two programmers made Ushahidi. A real time map that showed where violence was happening. Anyone can set up a map, and allow whoever they want to add pins and information to it using a smart phone or SMS. It gives the ability for non-programmers to create beautiful and informative maps for whatever they wish. In addition to the above, they've been used to track gender violence, helpful locations after an earthquake, mapping blocked roads after a storm, and a lot more.

I hope you come join us!