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The beginning of 2023 was marked by a series of severe earthquakes that struck southeast Turkey and northwest Syria in February. CartONG tailored its response and support to its partners through the efforts of its dedicated staff and volunteer community. Our team of GIS (Geographic Information System) specialists was mobilized in support of the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) GIS Centre to harvest geoproducts in the early days following the earthquakes and is now continuing its support as needs continue to evolve. Our volunteers also contributed to the global response by mapping the region during two mapathons sessions.
Beyond supporting our partners, the first months of the year were also dedicated to the development of our new governance model based on collective intelligence and the opening of an Executive Director position for the first time in our history. These changes, although internal to our NGO, are the result of 10 months of discussions, debates and rich exchanges for our teams, and will be reflected in our support to our partners by the facilitation of internal decision-making processes! Find out more about our new governance model in this article!
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~ GIS support to Solidarités International in Syria ~
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This quarter was marked by the end of our consultancy for Solidarités International's (SI) Syria field teams on Information Management. Our team assisted and trained SI’s in-country staff in creating a centralized database and an interactive map to display all SI’s activities in the north of the country for better coordination of their humanitarian response. Learn more on this consultancy in this article.
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~ New participatory mapping project for youth awareness of the SDGs ~
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CartONG launched a brand new project combining participatory mapping and awareness of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Through games, map exhibitions, interviews, mapathons and mapping workshops, the CartODD project aims at mobilizing young people in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region (France) to address the main challenges of their generation: climate change, migration and gender inequality. Read more in this short article.
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~ End of our support to the RESILAC consortium ~
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CartONG’s 4 year support to the RESILAC (Inclusive Economic and Social Recovery of Lake Chad) consortium with Groupe URD, Action Against Hunger (ACF) and Care, in partnership with the CCFD - Terre Solidaire network, Search For Common Ground as well as local organizations in the countries of intervention has ended. CartONG’s contribution took different shapes over the years: an IM Information Management needs assessment, a PowerBI project dashboard, and some data literacy and mapping training and support. A learning paper (in French) on the information management learnings of the project was also written with Groupe URD to help prepare for the next phase of the project starting this year!
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Support to Terre des hommes on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) - CartONG’s support on Terre des hommes’ WASH tools, started a few years back, continues. This time with the development of two Knowledge Attitudes and Practices Mobile Data Collection forms for schools and detention centers, as well as making available two Power BI dashboards as part of the Facility Evaluation Tools for WASH in Institutions (FACET) for schools and health facilities. All of these will be published on the IM Resource Portal to make them accessible for wider use.
Data literacy support to Max Havelaar France - CartONG will support Max Havelaar France’s (MHF) Data Unit to improve data literacy amongst the staff at its headquarters. MHF’s Data Unit team has recently undertaken an information flows mapping exercise following CartONG’s program data self-assessment methodology and is now seeking CartONG support to enhance best practices around data management. Many roles at MHF’s Headquarters are intrinsically linked with data management and there is a need to clarify roles and responsibilities, to harmonize approaches as well as to put in place efficient practices around data management practices such as stocking and sharing of data amongst colleagues and departments throughout the organization.
Strengthening the capacities of Sidaction's partners in data management - Since January 2023, CartONG has been accompanying 8 Sidaction partners, based in West Africa and the Great Lakes region, through an assessment of their data management capacities. This assessment was a first step to allow us to identify in the coming months concrete actions to be implemented to improve the efficiency of their data management and to increase the skills of these associations.
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CARTONG IN NUMBERS THIS QUARTER
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MISSIONS & TRAINING ACTIVITIES
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| MISSION - A complete 5-day training for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff on Geographic Information System (GIS), data collection (OsmAnd) and mapping tools (MSF Mapper, Google Earth and QGIS) was run by our team in Amman, Jordan. This training is part of the MSF GIS Centre's Learning and Development strategy and is intended for MSF Staff who may need GIS skills to carry out their mission. |
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TRAINING - A 3-day training on Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) and data collection took place from the 28th February to 2nd March at Expertise France Headquarters in Paris. It is part of a 2-year training cycle (in partnership with Groupe URD) and it was attended by 13 Expertise France’s Project Managers. The session aimed at guiding Project Managers to apply concepts and principles of MEAL systems throughout their projects’ cycle, ensure they are in line with Expertise France’s Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) policy and that they can support their teams in the implementation and daily use of these systems and tools.
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MISSION - As part of CartONG consultancy for Solidarités International's Syria field teams, one of our staff conducted a two-week mission in Syria in February. 9 staff were trained on the use of GIS applications.
EVENT ATTENDED - In January, one of our staff attended State of the Map (SotM) in Tanzania, as well as another Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team’s (HOT) UnSummit supported workshop with the aim of co-developing a white paper advocating for the OpenStreetMap (OSM) community needs pertaining to sustainability.
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MISSION - In January 2023, CartONG went to Athens to provide training on digital mapping workshops to our partner in the MapInclusive project, Social Hackers Academy. This mission was also an opportunity to put this training into practice and to organize the first pilot workshop of the project in Greece. The implementation of these workshops aims to promote the digital and social inclusion of migrant people in France and Greece.
EVENT ATTENDED - CartONG took part in the RMMV conference organized early February by KfW Development Bank, which involved 1000+ registered attendees; ranging from Ministry stakeholders to donors, the French Development Agency (AFD), the German Development Agency (GIZ) as well as the United Nations and NGO stakeholders. We presented a session with OpenStreetMap Madagascar on crowdsourced and participatory mapping of highly underserved regions in Madagascar for food security together as well as a session on scaling grassroots organizations to influence change and impact local and global ecosystems through open together with HOT. Overall, the exchanges were very rich and centered around lessons learned on remote monitoring, involving local stakeholders, impact monitoring but also how to leverage open data, build on the collective intelligence, ensure inclusion and improve accountability through new tools and methods and the involvement of citizens.
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RESOURCE
The OpenStreetMap Toolbox is available on the Learning Corner. It is designed to guide you step by step in using OpenStreetMap in your humanitarian and development projects. It provides you with tutorials and tips on how to use OpenStreetMap and the many mapping tools from its rich ecosystem as well as valuable guidance on how to map remotely and in the field, produce quality data, improve existing data, and extract and visualize that data.
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- Humanitarian Networks and Partnerships Week (HNPW) -
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CartONG will be participating at the HNPW this year, both by contributing to the H2H Network (via its annual general meeting) and through running a panel session on “Scaling grassroots organizations to influence change and impact local and global ecosystems through open mapping” (more information here). Several of our team members will be present in Geneva during the week, meet us at the H2H booth!
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Friday, April 14 will be Geography Night 2023, which puts geographers and geography in the spotlight! As part of this event, CartONG is coordinating for the 5th consecutive time several mapathons simultaneously all over France and Francophone Africa. More details on the locations of the mapathons to come in the next few days.
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- Spring maps - festival of citizen cartography -
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CartONG will be present for the first time at the Spring Maps Festival, which will be held from May 11 to 14 in Montmorillon, France. The festival is an opportunity to explore and understand the world through a full range of different cartographic representations.
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- 7th exchange day on program data management -
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The 7th exchange day on program data management will be held on June 8, 2023 with a strong focus on responsible data management! Organized by CartONG, this exchange day is intended for all French-speaking representatives of Civil Society Organizations (CSO) interested in program data management and wishing to exchange with their peers on the subject. More information here.
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- Associative life survey -
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This month, we launched a survey for our volunteer community to have feedback on their involvement in CartONG. We started with a form and are now conducting interviews with a few volunteers. The goal is to use this information to build our Associative Life & Volunteering strategy for 2023-2026.
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- Pro bono projects portfolio -
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As part of our goal to develop and structure volunteer activities (funded by the Fonjep), we published a portfolio (available in French) compiling examples of pro-bono projects that we offer thanks to the support of our volunteers.
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CARTONG IS CURRENTLY LOOKING FOR
- an Information Management Officer - more information here
- a Communication & Content Intern - more information here
- an Administrative & Logistic Officer - more information here
- an Information Management Project Manager - more information here
- a Senior Full Stack web-Developer - more information here
- an Information Management intern - more information here
- a HR Officer - more information here
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