As the world continues to adjust to safety norms following the outbreak of COVID-19, we at Ushahidi are taking time to reflect on our response to the pandemic, and taking the opportunity to learn from our users. In the last six months, there have been more than 1000 COVID related deployments created, across 116 different countries. Communities are self-organising to provide mutual aid, document COVID-19 testing experiences, and create visibility on where to access essential resources.

Ushahidi is excited to announce that we shall be hosting a webinar, on October 16th 2020, in a bid to connect with and learn from some of these users, who deployed Ushahidi to offset challenges occasioned by COVID-19 in dynamic ways. The goal of this webinar is to consolidate practical information to improve efficiency in crisis response for other existing and potential users of our platform. We wish to learn from their perspective and experience as pioneers of change in their community; that not only provided practical solutions to those who needed it but also promoted their general well-being, in the face of unprecedented difficulties encountered during the pandemic.

Featured speakers

Our panelists are deployers from 4 different continents who will share their goals and strategies and challenges encountered in their path to creating wide-reaching and impactful deployments. Here below are their bios and deployment links.

Harry Machmud

Harry has been working on humanitarian mapping activities since 2013 and as a country manager in Indonesia. He leads a humanitarian mapping team in his country through strategic planning and development of his team’s program activities He is also tasked with managing relations and strategy with donors, and cooperation with local NGOs, partner organisations, government agencies, CSOs, and technology hubs to develop and support their community project’s presence and reach particularly in disaster management and humanitarian activities.

Deployment: HOT - PDC - USAID Handwashing Station Map

Su Kahumbu

Su is the CEO and Founder of Green Dreams TECH Ltd. She is a TED Fellow and sits on the Board of Governors of the Mpesa Foundation Academy.

Deployment: COVID-19 Livestock Experts for Farmers

George Fullegar

George is the resident data scientist at Exeter City Futures, a community interest company focussing on transforming Exeter (UK) into a net-zero carbon city. He is a specialist in geographic data and R with around a decade in the industry and is an active advocate for citizen data science.

We wanted to ask citizens of the city to “highlight positive changes that you've seen, what you'd like to keep, and your ideas about how Exeter could be improved post-COVID” to understand how Exeter is responding to the coronavirus pandemic. We run www.exeterdatamill.com, and have a commitment to open data, so seek to use open-source software where possible, so Ushahidi was a natural fit. Early in the deployment of this project the local authority (Devon County Council) agreed to use the suggestions from this engagement piece to identify changes to the city infrastructure – this “joined-up thinking” was made possible by the APIs provided with Ushahidi.

Deployment: Reimagining Exeter

  • Pablo Ruiz Múzquiz

Pablo Ruiz-Múzquiz: Kaleidos CEO as well as its Taiga & UXBOX children. Hacktivist and feminist ally, he lobbies for critical thinking and open source. His academic background is in science and technology, and he tirelessly works to build enterprise projects around new sustainable productivity models that are committed to a positive impact on society.

Deployment: Frena La Curva

This panel will be moderated by Ushahidi’s Executive Director, Angela Oduor Lungati.

Dial in Information

The webinar details are as follows:

Date:Friday, 16th October 2020

Time:

  • Nairobi, Kenya | 4 p.m EAT | UTC+3
  • London, United Kingdom | 2 p.m BST | UTC+1
  • Jakarta, Indonesia| 8 p.m WIB | UTC+7
  • Madrid, Spain | 3 p.m CEST | UTC+2

Meeting Sign on Information