In 2020, the Covid-19 crisis has shaken up the world, disrupting our lives, separating loved ones, and leaving a significant part of the workforce either unemployed or having to operate in challenging working conditions. Existing humanitarian, economic, social and environmental crises have been exacerbated. Almost 72 million people have been contaminated so far, and more than 1,6 million people have died from the pandemic. Many are already calling 2020 "the lost year", but maybe there is another way to look at it?
In many ways, 2020 is synonymous with constant adaptation. For the first time of its existence, CartONG only conducted 4 field missions in a year. At the end of December, our staff team will have spent over 5 months confined and teleworking full-time from home in 2020. Public events and training sessions were heavily disrupted, and we decided early on to move these online - which led ultimately to the 2020 GeOnG forum also going virtual. A lot of ongoing activities or priorities also had to be fully rethought, when entire projects did not just simply get canceled or postponed until further notice.
In the midst of all this, a few very positive things came out. CartONG set up an Information Management (IM) Covid-19 Help Center to accompany humanitarian and development actors confronted to new emerging data management and monitoring & evaluation challenges due to physical distancing and international travel constraints. Thanks to our Agile approach we were able to adapt very quickly to the situation and to continue and even increase our support to our historical partners – MSF and UNHCR. The mobilization of our volunteers was exceptional (see below), which allowed us to support existing partners while new requests came in, but also and more significantly, to provide pro bono support to organizations that we wouldn’t normally be in a position to accompany. Finally, we were also able to continue disseminating numerous tutorials and other guidance resources in support of the sector, with a major release in September with the study on Program Data: The silver bullet of the humanitarian and development sectors?.
Despite the disruptive effect of Covid-19, we have managed to keep working on consolidating our processes, widening our network and strengthening our existing team. An Administrative & Financial Director joined CartONG in April. In 2020, CartONG also extended its partnership agreements with MSF, UNHCR, Terre des hommes and Max Havelaar France, while signing new ones with Action contre la Faim and MapAction. What’s more, after the publication of its Associative Project in 2019, CartONG released its first ever Volunteer & Associative Strategy in June 2020 and launched the reflections on developing a 3-year Global Strategy - which will be key to continue adapting our organization to the changing aid and global landscape.
We hope that 2021 will allow us to continue building on all the new practices, skills and relationships that we have developed this year, while also giving us the opportunity to reinvest parts of our activities that have been set aside lately. The whole CartONG team wishes you Happy Holidays, see you in 2021 for what we hope to be a smoother year!
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~ CartONG strengthens collaboration with Action contre la Faim ~
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We are very pleased to announce that the collaboration between CartONG and Action contre la Faim reaches a new stage with the signature of a partnership agreement between our two organizations for the 2020-2023 period. Learn more in this short article.
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~ Important changes implemented for the mobile data collection tools of SENS ~
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In 2020, CartONG worked on improving the mobile data collection tools used in the Standardized Expanded Nutrition Surveys (SENS) conducted by UNHCR and its partners in refugee camps and settlements worldwide. In particular, a significant part of our work consisted of improving the existing child form to better detect malnourished and anemic children in order to ensure children are referred immediately. Learn more in this article.
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~ Development of the H2H Network Dashboard ~
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The H2H Network released this summer a new website to advocate its role, and then tasked CartONG to develop a web map highlighting the activations of its members. The request was quite straightforward but presented some challenges: a narrow timespan, the need to fit the innovative design of the website, and to have a perfectly responsive platform. We managed to deliver a web map fitting these criteria in one month, showing the reliability of the skills and organization of our web development team. You can discover the H2H Network dashboard and the amazing work conducted by all members of the network here.
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~ An incredible mobilization of our volunteers in support of the MSF GIS Unit ~
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In the early days of the Covid-19 crisis, CartONG provided extended GIS support to the MSF GIS Unit by developing a new dashboard displaying information on travel restrictions and quarantine measures per country, as well as on international airport statuses and constraints on the MSF supply chain. No less than 20 volunteers provided critical support to this endeavour over the course of several months by gathering and verifying data that was being fed to the dashboard. Read more about our volunteers’ incredible mobilization in this article.
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~ Remote Sensing to support an Environmental Impact Assessment in Myanmar ~
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Since April 2020, a team of 3 CartONG volunteers has been supporting our partner, Solidarités International, in an Environmental Impact Assessment in Myanmar by providing their local team with a series of maps produced using remote sensing techniques. Learn more about this unique initiative here.
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~ An interactive map built in support of ECPM’s advocacy work ~
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Earlier this year, CartONG was contacted by ECPM (Ensemble contre la peine de mort), a French NGO dedicated to the abolition of death penalty worldwide to build an interactive web map that would display the status and key statistics on death penalty in each country of the world and help support their advocacy work as the NGO was celebrating its 20th anniversary. The interactive map was released on October 10th, 2020 - the 18th World Day Against Death Penalty. Learn more in this short article.
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~ Livelihoods and Energy Monitoring progress updates for UNHCR regional offices ~
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In December, CartONG developed 2 dashboards to showcase the progress towards the adoption of both the Livelihoods and Energy monitoring tools across UNHCR operations. These dashboards allow regional officers to view participating countries and highlights key findings from the 2019 Livelihoods monitoring.
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- CartONG and Groupe URD have recently started supporting the AFD Africa Department to develop a new accountability system that can depict AFD’s achievements in Africa. As a first phase of the project, we are currently assessing the existing system to capture the mechanisms already in place. Groupe URD will then work on a set of indicators while CartONG will produce several scenarios for the information management systems of the overall accountability system.
- Through a benchmark of various Mobile Data Collection tools, CartONG will support Welthungerhilfe to determine the best MDC tools to use at the organizational level. This benchmark has interesting requirements when it comes to platform management, case management features and data protection. CartONG plans to publish the most interesting aspects as a guide to other NGO that may face similar needs.
- Solidarités International, through its Senior IM Officer, has contracted CartONG in order to help improve their GIS usage within the emergency team response in Lebanon. The work has started by defining user needs and will continue by creating standard products, workflows and processes in collaboration with the GIS Officer in charge of the response while also mentoring him.
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CARTONG IN NUMBERS THIS QUARTER
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373 participants took part in the 2020 GeOnG forum
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42 webinars conducted in support of 7 partners and 12 webinars conducted during public events in support of the sector |
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140 participants took part in the first Get-Together of CartONG organized online
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16 resources released by CartONG this quarter in support of the aid sector
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MISSIONS AND TRAINING WORKSHOPS
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In October, CartONG facilitated a participatory mapping workshop in Mayotte, a French overseas department, with SCET (a consulting firm specialized in project engineering), during a short field mission. This workshop was organized to consult some of the local inhabitants of Kawéni, a city located north of Mamoudzou, the department capital, about their leisure activities as part of a broader diagnosis in partnership with the Public Land Institution of Mayotte, EPFAM, focusing on tourism and leisure practices in Mayotte.
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This preliminary assessment aims to contribute to a regional action plan designed to improve tourism development in the islands. During the workshop, the participants were encouraged to share information about what they are doing during their free time and to locate leisure activities on a map. The workshop was also an opportunity for the local community to receive a short introductory training to Mobile Data Collection.
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- CartONG conducted a series of 10 Mobile Data Collection webinars for beginner and advanced users in support of Terre des hommes’ team from the end of November till mid-December.
- 62 participants from UNHCR and partners in Argentina, Central Africa Republic, Nigeria, Rwanda and Somalia were trained on the use of the Livelihoods monitoring information systems in 7 webinar sessions.
- CartONG delivered a series of webinars on Mobile Data Collection and FACET analyser for the SWSC this quarter. Moreover, ad hoc support was given to enhance or modify forms upon request, while the overall FACET analyser was updated to include new elements for more specific analyses. The bases of a dashboard aggregating data surveys have been laid out and will be the main focus moving forward in 2021.
- Since the beginning of the 2020/2021 university year, CartONG has conducted 5 training sessions to raise awareness on Information Management, including GIS and MDC, at the Bioforce Institute in Vénissieux.
- In October, CartONG gave 3 webinars to Humanity & Inclusion's field staff and local partners. The first session focused on introductory mapping and GIS and the 2 other ones on data protection.
- CartONG facilitated a 2-day training for Acting for Life as an introduction to mapping and GIS for program managers.
- 11 volunteers from CartONG were trained on the free collaborative web mapping tool GoGoCarto, thanks to the support of FDVA Auvergne-Rhône Alpes.
- CartONG organized an afternoon of training on participatory mapping methodologies with a group of French-Sudanese researchers. This training led to a discussion on how to use these methodologies in the social sciences field of research.
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1- Audio & video content
- The 2020 GeOnG edition that took place online from November 2nd to 3rd was a great success. The session recordings are now available online! Have a look and don’t hesitate to share with your network.
- We are delighted to share with you this webinar (in French) produced by Groupe URD in collaboration with our team on the study "Program Data: The silver bullet of the humanitarian and development sectors?" released in September. This study was carried out as the project Strengthening program data management within francophone CSOs conducted by CartONG and co-financed by the French Development Agency (AFD) over the 2020-2022 period.
- Very pleased to share this podcast from the #EvalCrisis Podcast Series - DEVCO/ESS Initiatives on adapting data collection to the covid-19 crisis which features two of our Information Management Project Managers. It was recorded last summer. We hope you'll find it useful!
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2- Blog posts & resources published in English
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3- Blog posts & resources published in French
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4- Recommended external resources
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~ Calendar of the online mapathons of the first semester of 2021! ~
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In early 2021, online mapathons will continue on Monday evenings from 6 to 8pm and on Thursday mornings from 10am to 12pm for validation. To register to the online mapathons, please follow this link. We hope to be able to resume face-to-face mapathons very soon, stay tuned!
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~ A quick review of the first online edition of the Get-Together ~
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CartONG’s first online Get-Together gathered more than 60 staff and volunteers during the last week of November. The 7 workshops gave everyone the opportunity to discover new projects (Maps from here and abroad, initiative with Planète Réfugiés-Droits de l'Homme), look back on key activities of 2020 (Missing Maps, the GeOnG forum) and discover new tools (QGIS Styles, web mapping solutions, JOSM). On Saturday 28th, a collaborative session on the development of CartONG’s strategy was also organized.
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~ A look back at the Missing Maps mapathons in 2020 ~
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2020 was a very special challenging year yet it also gave us the opportunity to work differently. The remote mapathon format we developed worked very well with more than 1180 volunteer contributions over the course of a year! Volunteers helped improve the maps available on OpenStreetMap in 12 different countries in support of 18 of our partners. Once again this year, we participated very actively in the mapping of refugee sites for UNHCR, with more than 50 sites added to the map!
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