Community Participation

Community Participation: A Grassroots Approach

Throughout the course of this study, a number of communities have contributed to changing the narratives surrounding poverty. To do so, we held mapping workshops in Tinghir, Morocco and in Washington, DC with ​community members, educators, and students alike. These workshops consisted of training participants in OpenStreetMap (OSM), a free and editable map of the world. In Morocco, the team held participatory mapping workshops with community members, creating detailed base maps with local knowledge. In Washington, DC, YouthMappers at the George Washington University held map-a-thons to help take the data collected in Morocco and put it on OSM. All of these community contributions have helped us understand the impact of top-down poverty maps in development.

Stages of Mapping

Poverty Mapping Workshops - Tinghir, Morocco

Summer 2016

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- Washington, D.C.

28 January 2018

The Institute for Middle East Studies (IMES) at the Elliott School of International Affairs organized a poverty mapping workshop where grade 6 to 12 teachers and community college faculty from all over DC, Maryland, and Virginia attended the event.

The workshop discussed the definition of poverty and how it is mapped. It explored the meaning of poverty and introduced educators to open-source mapping techniques that can be incorporated into their classrooms.

“I like attending events where I learn new things. It’s always important to learn new skills and increase our knowledge on different topics,” says Maral Strathearn, one of the attended the workshop. “I was interested in learning about poverty and mapping, so I attended this one.”

Dr. Mona Atia, the Director of the Middle East Studies Program and Associate Professor of Geography and International Affairs launched the workshop by presenting different poverty of poverty definitions and measurements by multilateral institutions. example of Morocco, where she is leading on research on poverty and development, Atia analyzed the contextual aspects of poverty and its geographical targeting.

More than 12 educators were introduced to free and open-source mapping software where with the help of the George Washington University’s Humanitarian Mapping Society they learned how to map roads across the Moroccan Southwest.

“It is important for teachers and educators to learn how to map and to incorporate these skills in their curriculum and transfer them to students who might be interested in mapping, however, need support and coaching,” says Atia. “Educators showed interest in today ’s workshop. We hope to continue enhancing educators’ mapping skills and understanding of poverty and follow up with them through individual and small group sessions in the future”.

Upon the end of the workshop, attendant teachers and educators agreed to transfer that they learned to students in their respective schools. In its turn, the IMES will respond to teachers’ requests related coaching or material needed, the ​spread of the information on poverty and mapping.

Download the workshop presentation here:
K-12 Poverty Mapping Workshop (PowerPoint)

Interested in holding a similar workshop? Contact us, or visit our Get Involved page for more information.

Map-a-thon with the Humanitarian Mapping Society

October 2015 – April 2018

Over the course of three years, the Spatializing Poverty Project collaborated with the Humanitarian Mapping Society (HMS) at the George Washington University to use open-source geospatial tools for data collection and analysis. HMS is a student-led organization that trains and teaches fellow students, professionals, and other members how to use these kinds of tools. As part of this partnership, HMS participants input the basemap data that was collected in the field into the OpenStreetMap (OSM), a free and editable map of the world which was the primary source of map data for this Project (see Step 2 of the Participatory Mapping page).

During the partnership, HMS students also held “map-a-thons” to develop the basic building and road data on OSM, and assisted with training attendees for the Poverty Mapping Teacher Training Workshop (see the first tab on this page for more information). Currently, HMS and the Project are concluding a university partnership with Radiant Solutions’ crowdsourced platform, GeoHIVE. Through this partnership, students learn to use high-resolution satellite​ imagery to ​find footbridge data in Tinghir Province and Casablanca, Morocco.