Humanitarian OSM Team/HOT Microgrants/Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Summit Grant 2020/Proposal/Musahar Community Mapping
Your project
This is an opportunity for you to tell us about your project. In this section we'd like to hear about your community, which local challenge your project addresses, what you plan to do and how, your sustainability plan, and how you plan to share your stories.
Describe the local challenge your project is addressing
In this section please describe in detail the challenge that your project addresses. We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words.
The Musahar community, is socially and economically one of the most marginalized communities living in eastern Terai of Nepal and they are poorest amongst poor. According to census 2011 A.D, 0.88% (2,34,490) of total population of Nepal is Musahar Community who inhabit scattered settlements in the Siraha, Saptari, Dhanusha, Sunsari, Morang, Udayapur, Mahotari, Bara, Parsa, Sarlahi, Rautahat and Nawalparasi districts of eastern and central Terai of Nepal. Etymological meaning of the word 'Musahar' was derived from their dietary inclination to mouse which is symbolical. Literally, ‘Musahar’ means one who eats rats. Musahars are fully backward, Dalit, untouchable, highly marginalized, excluded group, very poor, but they were included untouchables category of caste system without specific ritual-based caste occupation. In the whole country Musahars are in the lowest priority from local to state level. They don’t have sufficient food to eat whole year, no adequate clothes to wear, most of the family members use one clothe entire years, and their children have to spend the childhood without good cloth. With children deprived of basic needs, it is impossible for parents to send their children to schools. That is why, their literacy rate is also very low. Around 90% of the total population of Musahar Community is illiterate. They don’t have big space in their shelter to live in, so more than 7 to12 persons have to live in a small hut. Also, the land they use mostly belongs to the government. So, The Musahars are in dire need of land.
Describe your project
In this section, please provide specific details about your mapping objectives. This should include: how you will contribute to help solve the local challenge you are addressing, what you aim to achieve with funding, what volume of mapping you plan to complete and how, and the number individuals are you aiming to include in mapping activities. We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words.
Our activities mainly focus on remote mapping of Musahar Community residing in different locations of eastern and central terai of Nepal. We will be conducting various training, mapathon program, field validations and many more. We will be mainly using the funding for the equipment such as Internet Devices (Wireless Router), which will help us conduct a mapathon for more than 40 participants once at different locations. Similarly, we will also be using this fund in buying GPS devices, for more accurate data validations. We will also need mini projector for conducting training sessions and map literacy program at different locations. Achieving the sustainable goals will be our key priority. Key priority in the meaning that, we will be using these devices not only for one time, not only for this project, but also will be useful for further program that we will be conducting in upcoming days. These instruments will be aided to the people with same ambitions of creating a communal difference through mapping. Because, our main focus is mapping and help others to create a map with the use of open-source tool i.e OpenStreetMap, it will create such an environment/platform for local members use their local knowledge in creating map on their own.
Describe your sustainability plan
In this section please describe how your activities will continue post-funding. If you are applying for funding to purchase equipment, explain who will store/use the equipment you purchase, and if you have long term sustainability plans for your community's development. We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words.
"Our activities mainly focus on remote mapping of Musahar Community residing in different locations of eastern and central terai of Nepal. We will be conducting various training, mapathon program, field validations and many more. We will be mainly using the funding for the equipment such as Internet Devices (Wireless Router), which will help us conduct a mapathon for more than 40 participants once at different locations. Similarly, we will also be using this fund in buying GPS devices, for more accurate data validations. We will also need mini projector for conducting training sessions and map literacy program at different locations.
Achieving the sustainable goals will be our key priority. Key priority in the meaning that, we will be using these devices not only for one time, not only for this project, but also will be useful for further program that we will be conducting in upcoming days. These instruments will be aided to the people with same ambitions of creating a communal difference through mapping. Because, our main focus is mapping and help others to create a map with the use of open-source tool i.e OpenStreetMap, it will create such an environment/platform for local members use their local knowledge in creating map on their own."
What are your community defined project goals, and how do you define project success?
Please explain you project goals. This can include: setting goals such as "we will train X number of new mappers", "we will register as a legal entity", or "the data will be used by X", and why these goals are important to your community such as "we intent to be legally registered so that we can receive more grant funding in the future", "we intend to engage X number of women in mapping activities so that we can empower local women" or "we want to build a partnership with X so that our data will be used and trusted". We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words.
Our main goal is map Musahar community residing in different part of Eastern terai. Musahar community is one of the marginalized and poor community of Nepal and have been deprived of their fundamental rights. Our main focus will be creating a data with the use of open-source platform like OpenStreetMap, QGIS, etc, which can be used by the local government to identify the problem in the community and to make a plan to minimize the problem.
We will encourage local people, women and girls, government officials and students from different schools and universities to get involved directly and indirectly in this project. We will be giving OpenStreetMap training to about 100 people directly and at this pandemic period, it has been possible to provide training through the virtual means which ensures more participation in this project. We will also be conducting Mapathon where women and girl will be encouraged to get involved. More than 40 girls will be a part of Mapathon, that we will be conducting throughout this project timeline.
Our project will be successful if we could encourage maximum number of community members, women and girls, students, etc to use OpenStreetMap and other open-source platform. Also, If the data we created and provided to the local authorities, government organizations, different NGO's and INGO's, community and globally through OpenStreetMap, helps directly or indirectly in uplifting the living standard of Musahar Community.
What are your community's long term goals?
Please give describe your community's vision. This can include: where you see your community in five years time, how you want your data to be used, future partnerships you'd like to establish, or how you would like your community to grow (or not!). We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words.
Geomatics Engineering Students' Association of Nepal is the inaugural chapter of YouthMappers. Since its establishment, GESAN have been able to conduct different training and mapathons for their members. Each year we conduct 2days OSM, JOSM and HOT Tasking Manager to our new members. Also, throughout the year, we conduct Mapathon to build a strong mapping community involving not only members but many other participants from different education background.
During this pandemic, we conducted Mapathon week virtually, where more than 70 participants took part including about 20girls to map remote district of Nepal "Pyuthan". Similarly, in collaboration with many organizations like YouthMappers, NAXA and Geomatics Engineering Society, we conducted Forest Mapathon program to map whole forest of Nepal. Also, our members were highly engaged in "Trail and Utility Infrastructure Mapping of Bajhang and Bajura".
This ensures that we have been actively involved in Open Mapping platform i.e OpenStreetMap. Since, we believe in collaborating with different organization to encourage more and more people in Mapping to create a mapping community in Nepal, it will help us achieve long term goals in the future.
List the tools you intend to use during your project and why
Please describe which tools you plan to use to collect, update, clean, or store you data and why. For example: "we plan to use HOT's Tasking Manager to coordinate volunteers" or "we will upload our data to X platform because..." We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words.
Our primary choice will be Open-Source tools because of its availability of free of cost and accessible to everyone. We will mainly use OpenStreetMap for this project as it is easy for everyone to use. We will give OpenStreetMap training to community members, local authorities and students from different background. For OpenStreeMap, we will use ID-editor and JOSM. ID-editor will be further used by the participants in the place where there is availability of Internet and JOSM in the place there is poor internet connection. Likewise, we will use HOT Tasking Manager to create a task for our members involving in Mapathon program. We will use OSM Tracker to track down every feature available while doing field data verification. Also, we will use GPS device for accurate location measurement of the features. All the data we gain from the field will be used to create different maps and this will be possible using open-source GIS software QGIS.
Please give examples of how you will use share your stories with others. This can include: how you will publicise your news, where you will collect media content, how you will use social media channels, and if you will reach out beyond your immediate network to share your stories. We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words.
Musahar is one of the marginalized and backward community, which hasn't yet come to limelight. So, we are trying our best to provide a transparent vision to Musahar community through mapping agendas. The aim of this project is to uplift the present condition of community nationwide and to enforce the concerned authorities to put a vision on this community. We will first prioritize the local medias and magazines to broadcast the problems of the Musahar community and about our mapping campaign. Our fellow colleague and community members will use the communication technologies such as Facebook groups, Twitter, Instagram and other media sources to flourish the condition of Musahar community nationwide. This way our mapping agendas will be primarily attached with these sites. The training session held to community level will be increased in a multiplicative way as we will encourage each trainee to flourish the mapping knowledge to other personals of the society.
We will be creating video where we will feature Musahar community members and try to share their story as a vlog. We will also make a documentation of each and every photos and video that we will take throughout this project. This will create a visual representation of our project to the audience.
Each and every activities of the project will be published in social medias and the local personnel will be taken as a prioritize member so that the community people will develop the vision of ownship. To sum up, the stories and the activities experienced and shared will be published in local medias, magazines and social networks.
Partnerships
Successful applications will demonstrate one or more partnerships with a local data user. Priority will be given to applications for which the data has been requested by a partnering organisation, or where the partner organisation has expressed interest in collecting the data for a specific use or intervention. Example partners include local non-government organisations (NGOs), community based organisations (CBOs), local governments, companies, universities, schools, and other academic institutions.
Describe who will use your data
It is important that the data you generate during the project is useful, and that it will be used to advance humanitarian and/or development challenges locally. In this section, please include: if the data you will be collecting has been requested by a partnering organisation, if there is an established formal relationship with the partnering organisation, if there is an existing MoU between you and the partnering organisation, and how long have you been working with the partnering organisation. If your organisation or community is going to be the data user, please describe how you will use the data, and how it ties in with your organisation's work. We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words.
Our main concern will be of producing a data that could be used by local authorities for the socio-economic development of the Musahar community. At this moment, we haven't signed any MoU with concerned data user but we are planning to sign MoU with our potential data users as soon as our project will be accepted by the HOT Micro Summit Grant.
Other major data users are various departments from central government which works on the welfare of marginalized community. Likely, we will do partnership with various NGO working on the upliftment of lives of Musahar community and provide the statistical map and data for them so that ultimately Musahar community will be benefited. Also, our main priority will be making these data freely excessively to everyone in need. We will be uploading the data to open platform i.e. OpenStreetMap. Every user can get access to these data freely through the platform. We represent a group of University Students, so that information/data gained from this project will be a great use for many students in their research activities too. We will be providing the data to those students too.
Describe any other partnerships you plan to mobilise or establish for the purpose of the project
In this section, please describe any additional partners you might be working with. If there are no additional partners (beyond the data user) this must be stated here. We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words.
We mainly focus on providing the data gained from the project to the local bodies. So, there might not be any other partnership we will be seeking throughout this project. But we will like to ensure that, these data will be available to everyone who wants it with valid cause.
Inclusivity
Successful applications will include a developed strategy for the inclusion of women, girls, and marginalised groups in mapping activities. This includes the number of women, girls or marginalised groups you plan to engage, and the way in which you plan to interact with them.
How will you ensure that your project activities are inclusive?
Please describe how you will engage women and girls, or other marginalised communities in your mapping activities. Please include the number of women, girls or marginalised groups you plan to work with and how, and at which point in your activities you plan to engage them. We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words.
Our mapping project will be inclusive with equal opportunity to girls and marginalized community. Our goal is to develop the marginalized community of Musahar. They will be directly involved in our team and lead us in the field work. This will not only help us to know the socio-economic aspect of the local community, but also, the local people feel the ownship of the project and work will full dedication.
We will take two representatives of the marginalized community from each of our area project. So, a total of six people will directly participate in our team. Similarly, participation in OSM and JOSM will training will be highly prioritized for the local government representative from Musahar Community. This results the involvement of around thirty people in training sessions.
We will include equal participation of girls in our team as well as in the mapping session. Girls will also be encouraged to present in the map literacy and training session. Our team will consist two girls in the group and fifty girls will be ensured with mapping activities. In field visit, womens and girls will be properly linked by our fellow girls. Morever, they will also provide some consult on the topic of taboo and sanitation.
Expansion
Successful applications will show how communities intend to grow community engagement. This includes a practical approach on how many new mappers you aim to recruit and how they will be involved in community activities. Priority will be given to communities that also include a plan for ongoing engagement beyond the grant period. If this is not relevant to your project, please explain why.
Explain how you plan to expand your mapping community
In this section, please include: your approach to recruiting new mappers, how will you engage new mappers, how many new members you plan to recruit, and how will you retain community members throughout the duration of project and beyond. We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words.
We are the active member of YouthMappers inaugural chapter GESAN and we annually recruit new commers of the University Campus in the youthmappers chapter, providing training and organizing various session. Meanwhile for the project, we will do OSM and JOSM training to the three different local and administrative unit of three district of our project area. We plan to recruit 20 people from each local government with a total of 60 people with full knowledge of open platform like OSM tasking manager and JOSM. Beside these, we will do map literacy to the Musahar people as they lack any technical aspects, map literacy will be given to each village and with normal gathering, we plan to provide this to about three hundred people of Musahar community.
To retain active mappers, we will run mapathon and the top participants with maximum contribution will be provided with attractive gift. Similarly, government officials will be encouraged to do mapping activities in long term. This will surely motivate community member and concerned authority to continue OSM contribution. We will also be in touch with the stakeholder in future and guide them if any problem arises in future.
Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Summit
How did you participate in the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Summit?
Please describe how participated in the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap summit, either as an attendee, speaker or volunteer
I participated in Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Summit as an attendee for the session of Saurav Gautam entitled as "Inspiring Youths to map Nepal: Challenges, Successes, Lesson Learned and Way Forward"
Key takeaways
Please describe any highlights, takeaways, inspiration, or things that you learnt at the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Summit 2020.
I was an attendee of the session entitled as "Inspiring Youths to map Nepal: Challenges, Successes, Lesson Learned and Way Forward". The session highlighted how Nepalese youth have been actively involved in OpenStreetMap in Nepal and how OSM has been able to create a difference in Nepalese society with the Map. The thing that I learnt from HOT Summit 2020 is that Map has been one of the finest tool for creating a better environment throughout the world.
Collaboration
Priority will be given to applications that collaborate with other OSM communities in the region. This can be country specific or regional and can include collaboration with Youth Mappers Chapters, or members of the HOT community to help with training, validation (as examples). For support in sourcing collaborators, email microgrants@hotosm.org.
Describe other OSM communities you are already working with
This may include Youth Mappers chapters, or members of OSMF (as examples). If you are not already collaborating with an OSM community, please state this and explain how you plan to work with other communities in your project in the following question.
Geomatics Engineering Students' Association of Nepal (GESAN) is the guild established in 2069 B.S. by students of Geomatics Engineering at Institute of Engineering, Pashchimanchal Campus, Pokhara. Since its establishment, GESAN has been a podium for the students to get engaged in activities like:
- Training and Seminars for students.
- Workshops and Expertise meets in different field.
- Skill develoment training and different games related to geomatics field.
GESAN is the inaugural chapter of youthmappers and have been actively conducting different training and mapathons related to OpenStreetMap. GESAN's member have been continuously contributing in OpenStreetMap. We will be collaborating with GESAN for this project as it will help us achieve our project goal as we as benefit their members gain personality and skill development. GESAN will be continuously helping us throughout this project and also will have their helps hands after this project too.
Describe other OSM communities you plan to approach, or establish relationships with, for the purpose of the project
We recommend your response be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words..
We have a community of OSM users from Nepal, OSM Nepal, whose members have been continuously contributing to this platform. There are a lot of organization such as NAXA, Kathmandu Living Labs, Youth Innovation Lab, Geomatics Engineering Society (GES) and they have conducted many programs involving many youths in OpenStreetMap and has remarkable contribution in OpenStreetMap. We will approach for the collaboration with these organization along with other OSM communities in Nepal for the purpose of this project.
Project plan and budget
Priority will be given to applications that collaborate with other OSM communities in the region. This can be country specific or regional and can include collaboration with Youth Mappers Chapters, or members of the HOT community to help with training, validation (as examples). For support in sourcing collaborators, email microgrants@hotosm.org.
Budget breakdown
Give your budget breakdown here. If you would like to present your budget in a tabular format, you can use this tool to convert your spreadsheet into a wikitable and paste the code below here
| What do you plan to spend the money on? | Unit being purchased | Expected cost (in US Dollars) | Total cost for budget item(in US Dollars) | Why is it needed? (please give as much detail as possible) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wifi Internet Device | 1 | $30 USD Per Month | $90 (For 3month approximately) | This will allow us to run mapathons with up to 40 people at one time. At the moment we do not have internet access so cannot run mapathons with large groups. Having wifi will enable us to grow our community and achieve our goals. |
| GPS Device | 2 | $100 each | $200 (for two device) | This will allow us to buy GPS devices for field data collection |
| Data Acquisition | $15 per day for 8 people for 7 days. | $840 USD | This will allow us to provide daily stipend to the local helpers during the field work. | |
| Mini Projector | 1 | $100 | $100 | We will be conducting various training and map literacy program at different location and would require projector to show the slides and helps in OSM + JOSM training sessions. |
| Training Cost | $800 USD | $800 USD ( total 3 trainings) | We will be giving trainings to more than 40 participants at once, so a hall is required to conduct such event. This will cover up the hall charges, snaks for the participants, merchandise to recognise volunteer contributions, certifications, etc. | |
| Transportation | 70 | $10 per return journey | $700 USD | To complete this project, we would have to travel different part of the country. We have a team of 6 members are planning to make short and long journey to different parts and make a return journey too and allocate $10 for each return journey (this may change according to the situations) |
| Lodging and fooding | $1000 USD | $1000 USD | We will be using this money for fooding and lodging throughout the project's training and field validation process. This will allow us to pay money for daily hotel and food (breakfast, lunch and dinner). | |
| Communication | 6 | $50 each | $300 USD | We will be using this amount for communication purpose throughout the project. This will include the mobile phone bill, mobile data bill, communication cost with the local authorities etc. |
| GIS Analyst | 1 | $300 USD | $300 USD | This will allow us to hire a GIS Analyst for digitizing the data, creating a database, creating Mapbook, Maps etc, which we will be providing to local government. |
| Miscelleneous | $300 USD | $300 USD | This will allow us to spend funding on extra activities such as buying stationary items, medical kits, masks, sanitizer, etc. | |
| Total: $4630 |
Project plan
Give your project plan here. If you would like to present your project plan in a tabular format, you can use this tool to convert your spreadsheet into a wikitable and paste the code below here
| Activity | Month | |||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month1 | Month2 | Month3 | Month4 | Month5 | Month6 | |||||||||||||||||||
| w1 | w2 | w3 | w4 | w1 | w2 | w3 | w4 | w1 | w2 | w3 | w4 | w1 | w2 | w3 | w4 | w1 | w2 | w3 | w4 | w1 | w2 | w3 | w4 | |
| Phase-1 (Administration) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Remote Mapping | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Phase-2 (Training) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Mapathon ( Training Community with OSM iD-Editor, JOSM | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Data Validation Training Using OSM Tracker | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| GPS Device Training | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Phase-3 (Data collection and validation) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Map Literacy program | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Data Collection | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Field data verification with the involvment of community members | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Phase-4 (OSM Map Update) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Adding the data collected from the field to update map in OSM | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Phase-5 (Creating MapBook) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Creating map from collected data using open source software QGIS. This will include map based on different data collected throughout the project and provide map book to respective local government authorities | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Phase-6 (Closing) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Collect Data for creation of report | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Final Report writing and submision | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Declaration
By submitting this form to Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, you certify the information contained in this application is correct, and that if you are awarded a grant, you will use it only for the purposes described above. You will provide written documentation and receipts for all of your expenses to Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team to demonstrate this. You understand that the decisions made by the HOT Microgrants committee are final.
Endorsements
Community members are encouraged to endorse your project request here! Please note: We will take endorsements into consideration in the final review but credit will be given to the quality of the application as well as the endorsement (this is not a popularity contest). Endorsements will be checked by HOT’s community team prior to selection to ensure the integrity of the endorsement (ie. that applications are not only endorsed by members of the community that submitted the application)
HOT staff, voting members and board members are welcome to endorse, and give feedback to all proposals. However, those who are taking part in the selection process will not be endorsing or giving feedback due to conflict of interest.
Instructions for Endorsement
- Log in to the wiki if you are not already logged in. - Scroll down to Endorsements and click 'Edit source'. - Add your reason for the endorsement followed by four tilde signs --~~~~ Note: The ~~~~ automatically inserts your name and the current date.
Below is an example of an endorsement.
'
- I fully endorse this project - strong idea and detailed project plan --Semower (talk) 15:14, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
- As someone coming from the eastern region of Nepal, I have seen the hardships faced by the Musahar community. I believe this initiative will give voice to this unheard community. --Rabin Ojha (talk) 16:07, 13 January 2021 (UTC)