Happy Earth Day! Yesterday we had the chance to tell the story behind the scenes of how and why we are working on this vision to support a generation of young people empowered to define their world by mapping it.
Invited by our friends at UCGIS to give a webinar, our team spoke about various perspectives on the consortium and the youth network, explaining the impetus behind our work, the rationale for universities to participate, the end use cases in developing countries, analytical and scientific approaches we promote, and how classrooms can participate and benefit.
This webinar introduced the recently launched Mapping for Resilience University Consortium, also known as mappersU (link is external), a global community of university students, faculty, and scholars who create and use open geographic data and analyses that addresses locally defined development challenges worldwide. To operationalize and unify their on-the-ground network of college students, mappersU founders at Texas Tech, West Virginia University and George Washington University have established YouthMappers to provide structure and guidance to the individual, student-led chapters and their mapping efforts, and invite other universities to join the movement.
Speakers were Dr. Duane Nellis, TTU; Dr. Patricia Solis, TTU; Chad Blevins, USAID GeoCenter; Dr. Brent McCusker, WVU; and Dr. Nuala Cowan, GWU. We were welcomed by Dr. Diana Sinton of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science and of Cornell University.