I’m spending this week in Rabat training and talking about open source mapping tools at TechCamp Morocco. This is the latest TechCamp taking place in North Africa with participants from Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Egypt. TechCamps continue to be a source of learning about and sharing ideas around technology and new tools for civil society organizations. I’ll be there training people on how to make maps with TileMill and discussing how organizations can tell stories with data and use open source mapping tools to improve understanding and decision making.

Free and open source mapping tools and data continue to be a great access point for organizations with limited resources to share and publish stories around their work and field. As the world has seen across North Africa and the Middle East in the past two years, publishing and sharing information has helped tell the stories of change within each country. The Syria Justice and Accountability Center continues to map violence and human rights data data across Syria, HarassMap maps and documents sexual harassment incidences across Cairo and Egypt, and the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap team maps health facilities in OpenStreetMap in Libya. TechCamp Morocco Edit descriptiona.tiles.mapbox.com

Map of Fes, one of the oldest and second largest cities in Morocco, where I did some OpenStreetMap mapping this weekend.

As TechCamp Morocco convenes tomorrow, participants will be engaging in discussions and learning how to use low-cost and open source tools for the work they do in their communities. I’ll be leading trainings on how to use data and maps within their work. Making custom maps with TileMill and other open source technologies continue to enable organizations to approach problems in completely new ways.

We’re excited to be here to lead trainings and discuss with organizations across North Africa in how they use maps to tell stories and understand their work better. I’ll be tweeting from the TechCamp at @nas_smith if you want to follow along.