Leaders of the YouthMappers chapter at the University of Cape Coast (UCC) in Ghana--the first inaugurated chapter of the YouthMappers network--have extended their GIS training skills into the world of openstreetmapping on September 30 and October 1 2016 at UCC campus using resources provided by TeachOSM. Leaders of the YouthMappers taught their colleagues that have registered as new mappers the same skills they have acquired from previous training in TeachOSM which will later be applied to humanitarian and development projects mapping by USAID.
This group understands how important good training is to have mappers participate in the important work of the humanitarian community. The advisor and the leaders of the chapter at University of Cape Coast with basic training assisted their colleagues in training new UCC YouthMappers in OSM. Currently, 150 students have registered for the training and having the trainers been trained in the first batch of students, they just ended training accommodated the second group of 18 students and a third group of 22 for an effective learning model.
On Saturday, October 1, 2016 two groups of students went to the field to collect data and later to the Lab to download their field data and to work on them. UCC Students are now trainers of trainees in OSM. They are gradually becoming more and more knowledgeable in OSM.
The leaders express their gratitude to the management and technical experts at USAID GeoCenter, for posting a task on the TeachOSM Tasking Manager on Kenya for training and also for their immense support for the program having initially given them data on TeachOSM Tasking on UCC campus. TeachOSM tasking manager mapping has made mapping very easy with this large group. The Director of the YouthMappers programme, Dr. Patricia Solís deserves a special mention to the success of our chapter training. We say a big thank you and appreciate her commitment and encouragement.
Once again the leadership of the YouthMappers chapter of UCC thanks the organizers and our peers at other universities for giving them such opportunity to be part of this global network. With collaborative effort with other chapters we are on our way to have a global geospatial database for future humanitarian assistance.
We extend our friendship to all youthmappers chapters around the world.
Professor James Eshun teaches in the Department of Geography and Regional Planning at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana and serves as the YouthMappers chapter advisor.