Join us on 24-25-26 October, 2022 for three inspiring days of exchanges, experience sharing and capacity-building during the 2022 GeOnG forum. Organized every two years by CartONG, this edition of the GeOnG will be centered around an ambitious main theme: “Do no harm” in the era of environmental emergency: revisiting Information Management in the aid sector. They are waiting for you: 9 roundtables, 26 onsite workshops, 4 online workshops, a Fail Fest, a Speed Geeking session and more! Discover the full agenda here.
Attend in person in Chambéry to get the full experience and access all sessions and networking opportunities. Can't make it to France? Sign up for an online ticket and enjoy our selection of 5 live streamed sessions (free of charge). Looking for a more advanced experience? Opt for the premium ticket (for a small fee) and select up to 2 online workshops amongst a dedicated offer.
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~ Support to Expertise France's Innov'I project ~
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After two first collaborations, Expertise France asked for CartONG’s support once again last March, as part of the Innov'i project implemented by the agency in Tunisia. The objective? To provide a dashboard able to monitor the activities of the various project implementation partners, and to showcase the advancement of the project. For the past few months, CartONG has been providing its expertise in data collection, processing and visualization to answer its partner's needs. Learn more about our support here.
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~ Development of FACET WinD ~
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After Terre des hommes’ field delegations identified the implementation of WASH activities in detention centers as a major challenge due to a lack of resources and technical tools adapted to the specificities of these institutions, their team reached out to CartONG to develop a new FACET tool, called FACET WinD. The objective of this collaboration was therefore to develop, test and disseminate a set of standardized tools to evaluate the sanitary conditions of people living in detention, and in particular to measure the different levels of service related to access to water, hygiene, sanitation, waste treatment, maintenance and cleanliness of the prison environment. Learn more here.
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~ Strengthening data practices of francophone NGOs ~
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We are continuing our work as part of our initiative supporting the strengthening of data practices of francophone actors (financed in part by the French Development Agency and Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs). Beyond the NGO exchange days - of which we organized the sixth edition on the 13th of September, gathering 12 in-person participants from 5 different organizations and 18 more attending online from 7 other organizations - we have been focusing most of our energy on the curated tech watch of the IM Resource Portal, the translation of relevant sector resources to French and the production and improvement of toolboxes on our Learning Corner (see more in "Resources").
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~ Our team continues improving the OPSMAPs ~
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CartONG has been working on the OPSMAPs for several years now. This tool - taking the shape of a web application - is used by the Camp Coordination and Camp Management Cluster and UNHCR operations to display indicators on the refugee sites they manage. In the last two years in particular, our work has been focusing on putting in place an automatic process so the tool can be made available in less than one hour by our web development team. Most of the work is now centered on improving the data component of the application, such as data cleaning and setting up the tool by filling a configuration file. With this tool, all UNHCR and CCCM operations can thus not only have at their disposal a standard version, which can be up and running extremely quickly, but are also able to input some specific information related to their context of operation. Data can be stored on an Excel sheet, Google Sheet, or CKAN application. There is also the possibility to get the history of the previous data collections conducted in the managed site, to get a full picture of its evolution over time. We are on our way to get ten OPSMAPs up and running by the end of the year, and here below is an example for the Burkina Faso sites.
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GEONG SATELLITE SUSTAINABILITY EXCHANGE WITH HOT - CartONG and HOT have embarked upon a collaboration surrounding the 2022 GeOnG forum, with this year’s edition being part of the HOT unSummit World Tour 2022. In particular, HOT is sponsoring representatives from up to 10 OSM communities from all around the world to come to Chambéry. Following the event, on the 27th and the 28th of October, CartONG and HOT will facilitate a workshop for the OSM communities leaders so we can together: (i) share, select, contextualize, co-design and innovate around sustainability approaches that worked (and didn’t!), (ii) produce an actionable plan for implementing sustainable initiatives into current workflows, and (iii) co-create a white paper to inform how organizations can better work with OSM communities and contribute to their sustainability goals.
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TRAINING FOR CEDEJ IN CAIRO - Originally planned two years ago before the start of the pandemic, this training mission is officially back on track! CNRS is funding a GIS training workshop centered on how to produce beautiful maps and infographics ready for publication in support of Le Centre D'etudes Et De Documentation Economiques, Juridiques Et Sociales (CEDEJ) based in Cairo. One of our GIS Specialists will be sent to give the training before the year is out.
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BACK IN THE FIELD! - Our team is back in the field for the next few weeks with UNHCR for a site mapping exercise. Two of our GIS specialists will train a group of enumerators as well as a data manager in a refugee site based in M’bera (far east of Mauritania) on how to collect and update the map of the site using FieldMap for ArcGIS. In addition to this first objective, they will also work with the data manager to reinforce his GIS skill set - in particular on ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online - so he is in a position to use and build end-products using the collected data.
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KEY FIGURES OF THIS QUARTER
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497days of leave this summer to recover from working on this year's various crises ;) |
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14 translated resources produced in the last three month in support of the sector |
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MISSIONS & TRAINING WORKSHOPS
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A few weeks back, Terre des hommes asked CartONG to strengthen the capacities of their MEAL teams in charge of the regional response to the Ukrainian crisis, who are based in Moldova, Romania and Hungary. To this end, CartONG organized 3 assessment missions, one in each of the countries in question, to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their Information Management setups, and provide recommendations and support to improve them. Following the in-country missions, a technical support hotline was also put in place to continue accompanying the teams from remote. During the mission in Hungary, CartONG also conducted a training session for the MEAL teams of the 3 countries, gathered for the occasion. The training focused on Mobile Data Collection tools (such as KoboToolbox and SurveyCTO), good practices in terms of data protection as well as use of Excel for data processing and analysis.
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A quick panorama of some of the other training and awareness raising activities we conducted this quarter...
- After a rollout and several training efforts in June to which a total 28 users from various NGOs as Medical Referral UNHCR Partners in South Sudan, a follow-up session was conducted in July to gather feedback, answer questions and provide recommendations when using the new system.
- A 3-day MEAL training session was organized for 13 staff members of Expertise France. Through 8 modules tailored for Project Officers and Pole Managers, the training covered the core principles, the building and implementing of a MEAL system, with case studies and practical exercises on collecting, processing, analyzing and using data.
- From June 29th to July 1st, associations and citizens met in Grenoble during the Forum International pour le Bien Vivre. CartONG presented a workshop "Feedback on 2 years of the Cartes d'ici & d'ailleurs project" addressing questions such as: in what social context do the psychological suffering of migrant people occur? How can subjective mapping workshops help address it? 20 persons also participated in an initiation to subjective mapping.
- Like every year, CartONG also took part in the Forum of the associations in Chambéry on September 10th during a sunny afternoon. It was an opportunity to recruit some local volunteers but also to raise awareness amongst the inhabitants of Chambéry about international solidarity projects led by local organizations.
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The Learning Corner is getting bigger! You'll find that the Mobile Data Collection and GIS toolboxes that were previously in blog post format have now been migrated to the Learning Corner in an effort to make them more user-friendly, with some updates. Other toolboxes have also been improved with practical exercises, such as the “Excel-ling in the field” toolbox.
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We have also come out with 4 training modules that will hopefully be of great relevance as a first approach on various topics related to program data. Some of these resources are only available in French at this stage, but by the next newsletter you should see many appearing in English too - for instance, you will find our program data self-assessment methodology now available in English!
As we are on the topic of translation, we have also done a huge effort to help francophone actors have better access to relevant sector resources on the question of data, through the translation to French of the OCHA responsible data guidance notes (available here), of The Engine Room guidance on how to Retain, Archive and Dispose of data responsibly (available here) and ACAPS resources around data analysis and quality (available here).
Finally, you will also find the latest webinars of our series to raise awareness on various data stakes of the day available on our Youtube channel (in French), as well as a couple of related blog posts. To ensure you don’t miss any of these, make sure you register directly to the portal newsletter.
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~ The 2022-2023 Tour de France agenda is out! ~
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Would you like to support a cause, meet new people and learn to map? CartONG invites you to participate in its 2022-2023 French mapathons tour. Several in-person mapathons will be organized all over France throughout the year, check the agenda here.
You can also join us online every 2nd and 4th Monday of the month from 6pm to 8pm: remember to sign up here!
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~ Meet with us at Festival International de Géographie 2022 this end of week ~
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CartONG will participate in the Festival International de Géographie in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges from Friday, September 30th (today!) until Sunday, October 2nd. Stop by our stand, or participate in our mapathon on Friday at 2pm. For more information, visit the webpage of the event.
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~ CartONG will participate in 2 other festivals and SIG 2022 this fall ~
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This fall, come and meet the CartONG team at two other festivals taking place in Chambéry this time. Join us for a mapathon at Festisol at La Base (Espace Malraux) on Saturday, November 12th (2pm). For Migrant’scène, we will be doing an urban walk around international food on Tuesday, November 22nd at 6pm. Contact Clara if you want to take part in one of these two activities.
Our team will also be present at the Esri [Live+] SIG 2022 conference in October. We will host 2 sessions, one on October 11th about our support to MSF operations as part of the Ukrainian conflict, and a second one on October 14th about the evolution of the MSF internal GIS organization since the launch of the GIS Centre in 2020. More information here.
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~ A new training for our volunteers ~
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CartONG is building the capacity of its community of volunteers, so they can then provide better and more diverse pro bono support to small and medium-size NGOs! On October 8th, 10 volunteers will attend a half-a-day online training on the web mapping tool GoGoCarto, led by our staff team. Financed by the FDVA Formation Auvergne Rhône-Alpes, this training will include a homework exercise as well as a feedback session.
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CartONG is currently looking for a:
- DPO & Information Management and Data Protection Project Manager - more information here
- Information Management Project Manager - more information here
- Communications & Outreach Project Manager - more information here
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