Map Mathare – Second week of training

The second week of data collection and trainings in mapping and video editing techniques is behind us. We decided we’ll hold map editing separately from video editing because of the overwhelmingly large numbers of people who showed interest in being trained.

The data editing in OSM session was held on Tuesday, 14.12.2010. Turnout was good as always, although some people from one or two villages did not turn up (I guess they’ll do the work on some other occasion). We only edited points as it would take too much time if we tried to edit the tracks as well. The tracks will be edited separately.
Observations:

• People had different skills as usual
• Drawing tracks is a bigger challenge than editing points
• We have to separate people into smaller groups, so we’ll have to rethink our strategy (trainings will have to happen on different days, in morning and afternoon hours, all three programs separately – this is because we need to create smaller teams so the trainings are more efficient)

All was good in the end, some of Mathare got mapped and hopefully some people got excited.

Video and voice trainings were on Wednesday, 15.12.2010. Around 15 people showed up for video in the morning session. No one came for the afternoon session (probably because everybody came in the morning). Kibera News Network guys did a good training and managed to produce two short video reports about A Bicycle Repair Man and Mathare Sewage.
Nobody showed up for voice (probably because people weren’t directly called and most of them have been to the mapping and video trainings). So Sande (second from top to bottom) from Voice of Kibera and I talked about merging mapping and voice trainings. First the trainees would receive training in GPS data collection and editing and after every session they would receive Voice training as well – since it’s a kind of mapping anyway, that way we’ll recruit more members to Voice.

The first two weeks were sort of a sample of what we’re offering. The real trainings and work will start in the year of 2011. We’ll have to figure out how to deal with large numbers. I sense they might shrink with time, but we’ll see.

For you to enjoy, here’s the move edited by Joe from Kibera News Network and Jeff Mohammed from Mathare about Kibera teams training Mathare: Map Kibera presents Map Mathare.

See you in the New Year. Exciting things are coming up!

Or as Jeff would say: Everything is cool, buda!