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News — 20 June, 2010

Haiti mission 3 - Training Day with the IOM Community Mobilizers

Today was the first day of training with the community mobilizers from IOM (International Office for Migration). These 25 young Haitians mostly engaged in Studies in Social Sciences and Communiction in Haiti are one of the interfaces between the Office and its "beneficiaries" living in the spontaneous settlements sites managed by the Office, all are already active supporting the operations through mediation and community empowerment activities. This training on OSM was seen as the geo component of a plan designed by the IOM Communication department to empower those communities with social media tools and techniques. In addition to our team of Nicolas Chavent, Kate Chapman, Todd Huffman and Trevor Ellermann there was a wide range of facilitators (all former trainees); Guensmock and Senatus from Forum Communautaire of Cite Soleil, Frederic Moine from IOM, and new to join us in training was Sabina Carlson from Ushahidi Haiti.

The morning started with setting up the OCHA meeting room to accommodate up to 30 persons. Then, Leonard Doyle from IOM kick started our day with a few words on the IOM Social, he was followed by Nicolas introducing OpenStreetMap and the Haitian work done remotely by the OSM community since 12-January and through the field work of the last HOT deploys. He stressed the need to hand this work to an Haitian OSM community which will then be piloting the growth of the project with the support of the OSM global and HOT communities. The content of the training - surveying & editing with OSM techniques - came logically as a way forward for empowering and strengthening OSM Haiti. After generic guidance on the use of GPS and questionnaires, groups then divided up into three languages; Kreyol, French and English. The initial lesson was in GPS use with the Garmin eTrex. This included how to clear data off the units, collecting of data and put OpenStreetMap on the GPS. After brief instruction the teams went out to collect data around the UN Logistics Base. Upon returning instruction was given in GPSBabel to create GPX files for editing in JOSM (Java OpenStreetMap Editor).

After a lunch instruction in the OpenStreetMap Humanitarian Data Model began. Our teams then went out once again to collect data and returned to practice editing. Officially training was over at 5 p.m. but an enthusiastic crew stuck with Nicolas Chavent in a lively editing of various types of Points of Interest. Such enthusiasm was only minority dampened by a heavy afternoon rainstorm. Which trapped those remaining in the OCHA Meeting container. All look forward to a second day of training bright and early tomorrow morning.

Kate and Nicolas for HOT