Community Science in Action

JOGL Africa is organising a special event with selected partners to commemorate Citizen Science Month. Citizen Science Month is an annual celebration held in April aimed at showcasing how volunteers from every walk of life can contribute to science by collecting data, analysing results, educating the public and solving problems. Dubbed ‘Community Science in Action’, the programme seeks to highlight cutting-edge community initiatives addressing important social impact issues in Africa and beyond. The event will start with project showcases from invited leaders followed by an open discussion on emerging trends, opportunities, and challenges in involving the public in scientific research and innovation. Participants will also learn more about how JOGL enables community science and creates opportunities in our ecosystem.

At the end of the event, we hope to connect people involved in research, innovation, entrepreneurship, civil society, and the public sector, cutting across disciplines and sectors. With our open approach, we encourage questions, comments, and interventions from all attendees.

Confirmed Speakers

Frederick Gyasi Damptey is an applied ecologist with an interest in ecosystem processes and patterns in altered landscapes such as degraded forests, arable fields and post-mine areas. He also engages citizen scientists (basic school children and forest fringe community members) in basic biodiversity research, forest conservation, and biodiversity/climate change awareness campaigns. He is also the founder of ForestAid Ghana, an NGO which seek to promote and support the sustainable management of natural resources. Over the years, he worked on several projects in forestry, whereby he engaged community members in afforestation programs through agroforestry interventions to meet their food and energy needs. Currently, he does a lot of citizen science campaigns in schools and local communities whereby he teaches people with no scientific competencies in basic biodiversity research for instance.

Patrick Campbell is a public interest technologist who leverages data science, open-source, and peer-to-peer technologies to tackle complex global challenges like climate change. He currently works both as a GIS Analyst for Innovate! Inc., a woman and minority-owned consulting firm with an award-winning history of delivering state-of-the-art services and solutions to Federal, State, Tribal and local government clients, and as a Fellow for Just One Giant Lab, where he has been spearheading the application of JOGL’s open, community-driven approach to solving urgent problems in conservation and climate action.

Seán Lynch is the founder and developer of OpenLitterMap. He began studying litter and dumping mapping when introduced to GIS in 2008. While doing a Masters in GIS, he was introduced to OpenStreetMap. Unable to find a similar platform for litter and plastic pollution, OpenLitterMap was born. Seán began teaching himself how to code and OpenLitterMap finally launched in 2017. So far, more than 6000 people have created an account and have uploaded more than 250,000 photos and almost 500,000 tags. Last year, OpenLitterMap got its first funding from cryptocurrency Cardano for their Littercoin reward, which is the first token rewarded for producing geographic information and collecting data about the environment. Unlike other types of money and tokens, Littercoin will not be listed on any exchange and can be spent in zero waste stores and the climate economy only. Join this presentation to learn more about OpenLitterMap and how you can empower yourself with citizen science and data collection to produce new information and untold knowledge about how badly polluted the world is.