From White African:
We’ve entered Ushahidi (background story here) into the $100,000 Netsquared Mashup Challenge for further development. We’re really excited about this opportunity for a number of reasons.
- First, we’d love to get experts involved to help us with planning and development work.
Second, if you go help vote up our application (LINK), we have a stronger chance of being selected. Going and voting for us at this point is the biggest help you can be at this point.
Third, even though the crisis in Kenya appears to be over (thank God), we’re continuing to build out Ushahidi in order for it to be used in future crisis related situations around the world.
Here’s their explanation of the challenge:
This year’s NetSquared Conference will bring together a unique mix of people from the public and private sectors to develop and release Mashups designed to provide deeper insight into the social issues affecting communities around the globe.
Those “people” are you — members of the NetSquared universe working on behalf of communities everywhere and the technical experts who care about these issues.
If we’re successful, we’ll learn something about cross-sector collaboration, meet new and interesting people, and build a unique gallery of Mashups that citizens, schools, and community-based groups everywhere can learn from, replicate, and build upon.
So, there you have it. Head on over to Netsquared, register and vote. I know it’s a hassle to have to register before you vote, but we would greatly appreciate it if you did. Better yet, if you’re interested in helping to extend Ushahidi even further, let us know!
Let’s see if we can make a global product out of an African initiated project…
Hat-tip: Kenya Pundit
Hi Paul and co,
ReplyDeleteI saw that you were writing about the Netsquared Mashup challenge. Ushahidi is a really awesome project and its great to see them getting written up around the web.
For people interested in conflict and East Africa, I wanted to share a little bit about our Mashup Challenge entry: Assetmap.org/uganda. You can read more at http://www.assetmap.org/uganda
The question behind the project is this: with peace on the horizon after 20 years of war in northern Uganda, and the big NGOs soon heading off to other war zones, who is going to support community organizations and northern Ugandan civil society as it transitions to peace time?
By mapping information about ongoing community-led philanthropic partnerships in northern Uganda, assetmap.org/uganda helps American citizens aggregate their resources to support post-conflict transformation.
We hope to facilitate collaboration among American donors and volunteers by providing a digital tool that:
•maps project locations so you know who’s working where
•tags information about the specific issues projects and organizations seek to address
•links tagged and mapped projects to the facebook and LinkedIn profiles of participating donors or volunteers
If you're interested in supporting us, please visit and vote for us here:
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/assetmap-org-uganda
Thanks!
Nathaniel Whittemore
Director, Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement
www.mycge.org
globalengagement at gmail