UCC had a successful Geoweek celebration! On November 13, we had a staff-students consultative meeting with all the students reading geography and faculty members about the state of geography at the Department of Geography and Regional Planning, University of Cape Coast. The vision of the Department and activities for the next five years was made known to the students. GIS, Remote Sensing and OpenStreetMap form a major component of it. Students were asked to ask any questions, contribute, and comment on anything regarding teaching and learning of geography and how to make the course practical oriented was made during the open forum. The auditorium was full to capacity (over 1200 students). At the end, new YouthMappers were registered.
On November 14, 2017, the GIS day was specially celebrated. It was 25 years anniversary for Geography Society (UCC GeoSoc) and One year anniversary for UCC YouthMappers. An anniversary cake was cut at the tail end of the first session of the programme. Invited guest from Sambus company (local representative of ESRI in Ghana) were there to make a presentation and also to donation software and cash to the Department. Other invited guests from China grace the occasion and made a presentation. The UCC students who had the opportunity to travel to Kathmandu, Nepal as YouthMappers Leadership fellows also made a presentation. I made a presentation on UCC YouthMappers and the SDGs. There was another presentation from a colleague, the dean for the faculty of social sciences chaired the occasion. It was well attended.
The second part saw the demonstration with the use of drone to collect data and how to integrate the data into GIS. After the events there were still a lot of students joining UCC YouthMappers.
Friday November 17, 2017 was dedicated to training of new members and also in preparation for the November 18, 2017 Mapathon day. On Mapathon day we registered 45 students as some were to write quizzes and attend impromptu lectures.
James Kweku Eshun is a lecturer at the Department of Geography and Regional Planning, University of Cape Coast.
He is the patron of the UCC Geographical Association (Geosoc) and the Advisor to UCC YouthMappers Chapter, the first inaugural Chapter of this International University Consortium on Mapping for Resilience.