East Academy

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Female genital mutilation, or FGM, is a traditional cultural practice that involves the cutting or removal of the external female genitalia. This practice is very painful, causes medical and emotional problems, and in some cases, women can lose their lives. Although it is illegal in Tanzania, many tribes continue to perform these mutilations , especially in small remote villages in the Serengeti district. Unfortunately, campaigning and outreach efforts in this area are hampered by the lack of maps showing the locations of these villages.

A survivor's story: the Mugumu shelter Rhobi Samwelly grew up in a small village in the Serengeti. At the age of 13, his family, which belonged to the Kurya tribe, wanted to perform FGM on him since they conceived it as a traditional preparation for marriage. However, one of her Ukraine Mobile Number List friends had died the previous year from this same practice, so Rhobi knew the danger she was facing. She begged her parents in vain not to expose her to this practice, however, since she had no one to turn to, she had no choice but to accept, which almost cost her her life as she bled so much that she became unconscious.

Twenty years later, she finally achieved her dream and founded the Mugumu shelter , a sanctuary where women who refuse to undergo FGM can go during the annual “cutting season.” To make sure they know they have a safe place to go, Rhobi visits those remote villages where women are most at risk of FGM, talks to them about their rights and tries to persuade these communities to perform alternative, safer transition rituals.

Reaching the villages has been a complicated job given the lack of available maps. In fact, before this project, there was no type of map, so it was impossible to talk to all the women in the region. Some villages like Sogoti had been completely alienated. On some occasions, trees even had to be pruned to be able to reach these communities for the first time. The main concern that existed was that many women were left without their help.

Promote mapping in rural communities Living in London, I am used to having quality maps that allow me to get where I want to go. When I visited rural Tanzania for the first time in 2014, as a project manager for the Tanzania Development Trust , I was frustrated by the lack of maps in the rural areas where we worked. For this reason, after discovering the “ Openstreetmap ” initiative, I dedicated myself to helping these communities to create maps of their own villages, which would give them greater mobility and a different opportunity to better plan their services.



Together with fellow mapping enthusiasts like Egle from HCI , we started the Crowd2Map Tanzania project and organized a “triple mapping party” (known in the guild as mapping parties). We partner with University College London (UCL), Ramani Huria in Dar es Salaam and Technarium in Vilnius, where Egle resides. We map roads, villages and buildings around Mugumu from satellite images within the HOT Tasking Manager. More than 200 people participated in the event. Parallel parties were also held in Nairobi and at Rhobi's own reception centre, which collaborated with the project.

Adding the names of the villages we were pointing out was quite a challenge. We used Tanzania Open Government data , which showed the names and locations of schools and medical clinics. We recruited over 300 volunteers from the UN's online volunteer program and created a Google Drive document so they could paste the latitude and longitude of each school into Openstreetmap, find the specific building on the satellite image, draw a box around them. around and label it appropriately.

When we started, we used a smartphone app called Epicollect . As I traveled through rural Tanzania visiting projects by bus, daladala (minibus) and pikipiki (motorcycle) I tagged as many places as I could, but more importantly, I taught everyone I met to do the same. To encourage people to participate in this mapping project, which requires some effort and money to acquire mobile data, we organize monthly competitions. The person who adds the most relevant points each month wins a small cash prize. We spread the initiative among personal contacts, with WhatsApp groups, and with a Facebook group where we also answered questions about how to participate. Later, when Maps.Me released its first version, which allows you to add places directly in Openstreetmap, we started using this tool.
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