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CartONG was founded in 2006 to support humanitarian organizations in their management of geographical data and to promote the sharing of tools, methodologies and data within the humanitarian and international development sector (find more information on our history in the video produced for our 10th anniversary in 2016). Having undergone many changes since its creation, it appeared necessary at the beginning of 2019 to draft an associative project that would clarify the social contribution of our organization, specify its fields of expertise, and (re)define its values so as to guide its future development.
In keeping with our rather horizontal organizational functioning mode, the design process of this associative project was naturally open to as many people as possible: board, staff team, members and volunteers. Following the work conducted by 4 groups on the themes of "Being", "Doing", "Living" and "Becoming", a first version of the associative project was introduced during the Get-Together of April 2019 for discussion. At the end of the weekend, a second more advanced version of the associative project was sent to all CartONG’s members by the board, and the final version was validated at the end of May.
This associative project complements CartONG's statutes and affirms the choice of our organization to promote certain key values in the implementation of our projects and in the way our teams work: Human-centric, Professionalism, Agility, Autonomy, Collaboration and Connectedness. It also reaffirms CartONG's function as a support NGO and resource center. Finally, it sets out the clear intention of our association to be "a Non-Governmental Organization whose mission is to put data at the service of humanitarian, international development and social action projects".
We hope that by reading this document, our partners and those who have recently discovered us will be able to better understand the current positioning of our NGO, and that it will help foster new collaborations and commitments! We also invite all those interested in CartONG's associative project to get involved in the activities of our association. To do so, you can choose to join CartONG as a member, become a volunteer or contact us to develop new partnerships - more information here. To discover the different stages of the participatory process implemented by CartONG for the development of its associative project, visit our website.
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| The Map Centre V2: an online GIS platform designed by CartONG in support to the MSF GIS Unit |
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CartONG has been supporting the work of MSF-Switzerland since 2013, providing GIS and mapping services in support to the MSF GIS-Unit - which was created in 2014. In the last couple of years, CartONG has also worked to support MSF staff by developing geographic web applications tailored to the needs and stakes of humanitarian operations. It is in this very context that the Map Centre v2 was developed by CartONG for MSF. The Map Centre platform is a full-custom application created using the Symfony framework, and that acts as a single point of entry to access all geographical products used by MSF for its activities, both at headquarters and at field operations levels. Watch our video to discover some of the main functionalities of the second version of the Map Centre, released in late 2018. More details on our website.
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In March 2019, CartONG carried out a 2-week mission in the informal urban district of Boassa, located on the outskirts of Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), to provide support in mobile data collection and mapping to the local NGO Yaam Solidarité. Many cities in the developing world are currently experiencing rapid and uncontrolled urban growth, characterized by the development of "spontaneous settlements" (also called "non lotis" in Francophone Africa) in which populations live in very precarious situations. Built out of the formal and legal process of urbanization, these informal settlements often do not appear on official maps and databases and therefore do not benefit from basic services and adequate urban improvements, making their inhabitants all the more vulnerable to climatic hazards, natural disaster risks and health crises. Collaborative mapping, open data and new "low tech" geographic information technologies represent a real potential to meet these challenges, in particular by making such new districts visible on the map, by supporting the implementation of urban improvement projects and by ensuring the involvement of local communities. To learn more about the support provided by CartONG with the help of its volunteer team and in collaboration with the OSM community in Burkina Faso, read our news article here.
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Launched in May 2018 with the support of the Fondation de France, the Maps from here & abroad project aims to create new frameworks for exchange and intercultural dialogue between migrants (asylum seekers and persons under international protection) and members of their host society through mapping workshops. The results of this first year of implementation are very positive, with a total of 11 mapathons organized in Grenoble, Villeurbanne, Nanterre, Ivry-sur-Seine, or Ambérieu-en-Bugey and 9 sensitive mapping workshops set up in Montmélian, Chambéry, Lyon and Villeurbanne, gathering a total of about 250 participants. One of the main challenges of the project was also to develop educational materials and workshop facilitation methodologies for social actors in France. CartONG has therefore undertaken an in-depth work to document and disseminate several resources to help these actors organize mapathons. This first pilot year was also a real success in terms of documentation and experimentation around sensitive mapping, an approach that is still little known and little used outside the field of university research. CartONG has developed 2 guides of good practices on both sensitive mapping and the adaptation of the mapathon's format to new audiences, published under a Creative Commons license. Learn more about the project and check out the resources produced by CartONG here.
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- - CartONG is currently hosting a consultancy mission in data protection to help improve its practices as a data processor. This initiative is funded via the FRIO programme, which is supported by the French Development Agency. We hope to be able to share documentation of interest for H2H organizations in the third quarter of 2019.
- - We will be soon publishing a lessons learned paper based on the last 5 years of MDC practices at Tdh.
- - CartONG will be covering an evaluation of the mapping needs of the permanent secretariat for NGOs (SPONG) of Central African Republic, on behalf of the Bioforce training institute, prior to supporting them in the choice of tools and associated capacity building.
- - CartONG is starting a new “data collaborative” project in Senegal, in partnership with Healthsites.io, the local OSM Senegal community & Geomatica. The project is funded by DigitalSquare via PATH. The aim is to replicate what we did last year in DRC in terms of collaboration, and utilize Healthsites.io’s new data collection and integration system. We will organize a field mission in Saint-Louis in July.
- - CartONG is supporting the RESILAC (Inclusive Economic and Social Recovery of Lake Chad) project and consortium to improve its information management (IM) component. The first step of the support (IM assessment) has been launched!
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CARTONG IN NUMBERS THIS QUARTER
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1 Story Map co-created with ICRC (check it out here!) |
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37 participants at the Spring 2019 Get-Together |
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18 maps created to support our partners, MSF & ACAPS |
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44 countries supported as part of the UNHCR DRS project |
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MISSION AND TRAINING WORKSHOPS
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CartONG was in Jérémie (Haiti) in June, for the project "Vil nou nou pi si pou fanm yo" ("Our city is safer for women") carried by Care Haiti and funded by UN Women. CartONG trained 13 staff of Care Haiti in the use of uMap, and facilitated participatory mapping workshops to identify unsafe or high-risk locations for gender-based violence in the Saint Helene neighborhood. The data collected from women and youth communities living in this pilot district was imported into uMap during the mission, and will now enable Care Haiti and other local actors in charge of urban planning to take risk-reduction actions based on the recommendations of local inhabitants. In the coming weeks, Care Haiti will duplicate the participatory mapping workshops in 6 other districts of the city.
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In May 2019, a staff of CartONG was deployed to Kenya in support of UNHCR. This mission was composed, first of all, of some interventions at the UNHCR WASH global forum to support the UNHCR WASH officers from around the world on their Knowledge, Attitude, Practices surveys implementation as well as WASH infrastructure mapping - CartONG having been the UNHCR WASH team’s partner on these topics since 2015. The aim of the second week of the mission was to train the Kenya UNHCR team and its implementing partners to the use and adaptation of the global WASH KAP survey. As this was the 10th mission of the kind, UNHCR also decided to send a filming crew to help produce online material to help with the scale-up of this WASH monitoring approach across all refugee camps and settlements.
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- - One-week training mission on the UNHCR Livelihoods Monitoring Systems & Tools conducted in Gbadolité, DRC
- - One-week implementation mission in Tunisia to start the scientific evaluation of the PRIQH2 project and work with local partner ARRU
- - 4 presentations conducted by or with CartONG during State of the Map France
- - 1 GIS & 1 MDC introductory session at Institut Bioforce in Vénissieux
- - 2 sessions of awareness-raising on SDGs organized in Chambéry as part of the Educ’Aura project
- - Participation in a roundtable organized by GRET on the impact of local actors on sustainable development, bringing a cartographic angle to the discussion
- - Participation to the production of a 1h30 ENSG Massive Open Online Course on what humanitarian mapping is about, that will be made public for the next school year
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A very special thank you to all the CartONG's volunteers who worked on it! Their support was instrumental to the release of the atlas. If you'd like to learn more about the project, you can also check out our news article.
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It’s happening this weekend! Meet us at Festival Lafi Bala
- - Discover the interviews of associations E-graine Chambéry and J’aime boc’oh, dedicated to raising awareness about SDGs, and how they can be implemented at a local level by associations and citizens - available during the 3 days
- - Take part in a treasure hunt about access to safe water and sanitation worldwide - on Sunday 30/06 at 2pm
- - Join us for a discussion on "Digital technologies: an innovation at the service of SDGs" - on Sunday 30/06 at 2:30pm
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~ Support us via your company! ~
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Organize a mapathon with your colleagues and support the Missing Maps project!
In order to allow us to continue implementing our open mapping activities, we invite companies to organize mapathons to contribute to our work, while supporting our field mapping activities with a donation. For instance, two of our volunteers organized a mapathon in their former company, Arvalis, in June 2019, contributing to the mapping of refugees’ camps for UNHCR. Another example is the atlas that we created entirely based on OpenStreetMap data for the Vatomandry district in Madagascar, which was sponsored by a CNES donation.
To learn more about how you can support CartONG with your company, check our portfolio with examples of projects you can help us start (in French), or contact us!
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Thank you to all the volunteers who took part in the Nuit de la Géographie 2019!
This year, we organized and supported 17 mapathons around the world, with the help of our amazing team of volunteers and our 2 service civiques. If you missed it, check out the Story Map about this event.
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Last but not least, we are proud to share the documentary film narrating Nomad Maps, an Andean cartographic travel by bike that was carried out by one of CartONG's volunteers, Alban Vivert, in 2018. The film is available in French (with Spanish or English subtitles), and Alban is available to do screenings and debates about this initiative. More information on the Nomad Maps website. Enjoy!
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| Documentary film about the Nomad Maps volunteer project |
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