News — 10 May, 2012

Back the First Haitian Creole OpenStreetMap Book!

When the January 2010 Earthquake happened in Haiti the OpenStreetMap community began mapping. We mapped and mapped until OpenStreetMap was the most detailed base map for Port-au-Prince available. In March of that year the handover of the map began. Two years later the handover is not complete, HOT and Community OpenStreetMap Haiti continue to work together coming closer to that day. One very important missing step is having adequate training materials available in Haitian Creole.

When the January 2010 Earthquake happened in Haiti the OpenStreetMap community began mapping. We mapped and mapped until OpenStreetMap was the most detailed base map for Port-au-Prince available. In March of that year the handover of the map began. Two years later the handover is not complete, HOT and Community OpenStreetMap Haiti continue to work together coming closer to that day. One very important missing step is having adequate training materials available in Haitian Creole.

Haiti has two official languages, French is the language of government and Haitian Creole is the language of the people. Currently there is much training information available in French, but almost none available in the people's language. To have a true free map for everyone in Haiti then materials about OpenStreetMap must be available in Haitian Creole. Yesterday the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team launched a project to start this process. We are fundraising to host a translation workshop in Haiti to translate the free French OpenStreetMap book into Haitian Creole.

We don't need very much for this to happen, we already have a volunteer to lead the workshop and volunteers to perform the translation.  All that is remaining is the need for funding for basic logistics, flights for the volunteer lead and food for our volunteers. This is really a small barrier in the way.

To learn more visit our Kickstarter Page and Back Us!