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COMMUNITY USER EDUCATIONAL TOOL TOOLBOX #1 SELF-ASSESSMENT. Why do the toolbox? These tools are based upon the rich experiences of people and organizations that have used the Ushahidi instance. The following toolboxes are crucial to your success ! . Checklist TOOLBOX 1- SELF ASSESSMENT
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COMMUNITY USER EDUCATIONAL TOOL TOOLBOX #1 SELF-ASSESSMENT
Why do the toolbox? These tools are based upon the rich experiences of people and organizations that have used the Ushahidi instance. The following toolboxes are crucial to your success! Checklist TOOLBOX 1- SELF ASSESSMENT • TOOLBOX 2- IMPLEMENTATION TOOLBOX 3 - USING YOUR INFORMATION TIPS: A Ushahidi project doesn’t start with setting up the platform and putting it on-line. You need to prepare your strategy, study the context, understand the implications, secure cooperation and knowledge of the tool for all the actor involved. The launch of the platform is the last step of the project, not the first one. (AnahiAyala Iacucci)
Tips on using these toolbox documents: These toolboxes are in beta (draft). We are using this content to test for the final web and print versions toolboxes. Please provide feedback. Print documents do not include the extra notes which appear in the online versions. Online documents will show rotating tips, which are shown as extra comments in the notes field.
TOOLBOX 1 • SELF- ASSESSMENT • Helping you take the first steps to determine if the Ushahidi platform is a fit for your project • Learn about Ushahidi • Find out if Ushahidi will fit into your project goals & objectives • Think about partnerships for your project • Identify the information, communication and technology needs for your project • Think about what resources are necessary to make your project successful
Let’s Begin….. First Name:____________ Last Name: ____________ Are you an individual or part of an organization? Organization Individual Email Address:___________________ Organization Name: ____________
You can use the Ushahidi Platform for information collection and sharing, visualization and interactive mapping. There have been over 3000 uses of Ushahidi/Crowdmap. Here are some common types of uses of the Ushahidi platform (Ushahidi video introduction) (FAQs).. And more Deployments Ushahidi Prototype Haiti Crisis Map Uk Riot Cleanup Chicago Blizzard Japan Earthquake Hot Flash icon For emergencies like natural disasters, unexpected events….(more text here). Slow Burn For ongoing or complex emergencies, to track changes in communities or responding agencies …. (crime mapping?) icon War on Gaza DRC Zim Political Crisis Point on a Calendar icon For events like election monitoring, media campaigns with ending dates…. (more text) Uchaguzi-Kenya Sudan Vote Monitor Unsung Peace Heroes Long Term icon Voice of Kibera KANCO (health) Uchaguzi-Kenya For ongoing programs and initiatives (human rights monitoring, media, environmental mapping, local gov mapping, resource mapping ) EXAMPLES..
Tips on Thinking about How Ushahidi Will help your Project Here are some things you might want to think about before you start using the platform….. This toolbox will help you answer many of these questions.. Who is your target audience? What is the incentive/motivation for people to use your platform? How is mapping going to contribute to your project? How are you collecting and using data now? Do you just want to use a new cool and free tool? Is there a gap you are trying to fill?
Project Goals and Objectives What are the project goals? (user enters text here) What are the project objectives? (user enters text here) Example Goals Violence Against Children Project Voice of Kibera Uchaguzi Kenya Example Objectives Uchaguzi Kenya What kind of project are you working on? (please check all that apply) • Health • Water and Sanitation • Media • HIV/AIDS • Environment/Conservation • Women’s Issues • War/Conflict • Natural Disasters • Human Rights TIPS: How will you achieve your goals? How will the collected information achieve the goal. • Children and Youth • Education • Gender Based Violence • Economic Development • Security/Protection • Political Violence • Elections/Election Monitoring • Other, please describe______ Is this a new or existing project? new • Is this a development or humanitarian/crisis project? (definitions and examples) • Development/Governance • Humanitarian/Crisis • Community Programming • Other old
Expected Outcomes/Impact Your project/program’s goals and objective are: With the goal to _____Users can correct the auto- inserted text here________. The program/project objectives are Users can correct the auto- inserted text here__. icon Type What are the expected outcomes/impact? ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ How will the Ushahidi platform help you achieve your expected outcomes/impact? ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ TIPS: How will you achieve your expected outcomes?
Mapping and Visualization Why use a map? What is the benefit of using mobiles or mapping to track your information? The information does not need to be crisis related. You might want to map existing community resources within a geographic area or raise awareness of local events (Linda Rafferty). Mapping data is important for creating responsibility. The fact that people see their report it is the biggest motivation to engage them.-Oscar Salazar - Cuidemos el Voto Mapping information will benefit your project by: What kind of information will you map? How do you intend to use it? Who do you want to view the map? The mapping system in Ushahidi is not automatic: you need to geo-reference information manually. You can do it at the admin level with volunteers or other people. If you plan to use it as a crowd-source system, you need to have a big number of people mapping those messages, or you need to do it only by web-submission (it means also forget about the media monitoring, SMS, e-mails and twitter submissions). What level of precision does the mapping require? Do you want data points or data areas? (Anahi Ayala Iacucci) icon case studies instance sites Blogs/media Learn more…
Technology and “the rest”- Allocating Time Our users’ experience to date has humbled us to realized that the much of the success from organizations using the Ushahidi platform comes from the project planning and preparation around the technology itself…… Just because you bought a domain name and ran the Ushahidi installer doesn’t mean that anyone is going to use the system — and even if you somehow get a lot of reports, you might not be relevant to the existing systems (that is, all the other people who are working on the same problem). So as Ory said in Cape Town, “Don’t get too jazzed up! Ushahidi is only 10% of solution.” Systems like Ushahidi have turned enormous communication barriers into a trivial installation and training process. But there is a whole other 90% of real work. (Chris Blow) Let’s continue on with that 90% .......and identify potential partners in your project. Learn More: Why technology is 10%-Anahi Ayala Iacucci Allocation of Time –Chris Blow
Partnerships & Your Audience Partnerships and your audience are key to the success of your project. • What roles will they play? • TIPS- Which partner will provide the overall project manager. Will it be your organization? • Who are you partners? (listing) • TIPS- One of the major partners in project is a technical administrator. If you envision customizing your instance a lot you should think about having a developer as a partner if you do not have one in your organization. • Who are your Audiences? Why do you think they will use your platform? • TIPS-One of the fundamental partsof your project is the definition of your audience. Who do you want to visit the site and use your information and who you want to be yourreporters? icon Trust & Partnerships The crowd as your partner Learn more…
Information Your Ushahidi instance will help you collect, organize and communicate information for the goals of your project (existing Project)- What information are you currently collecting? What information do you want to add with this project? (new project) What information do you want to collect? How will this information allow the project to achieve it’s goals? IMPORTANT! What is the existing information flow and how the information flow you propose will change or modify the existing one? The idea is that the more you modify the existing information flow the less your project will be successful. icon Type case studies blogs/articles Learn more… instance sites TIPS: Does someone else have existing indicators or initiatives or information needs or formats that you should be linking in with and following or supporting? (Linda Raftree)
Communication Your Ushahidi instance will help you collect, organize and communicate information for the goals of your project. Collecting information into platform is only half the battle, how will you communicate information to your audience? Partners? Media? From earlier in this toolbox, this is your audience:( slide 11) ______________________________________________________ How do you plan to tell people about your project and how to send information into the platform? Television Advertisements Radio Newspaper Flyers Internet How do you plan share the information with your audience? Example “The people who Media Focus on Africa Foundation are targeting do not have Internet access - We want to bring the results back to the people using mass media.” As a result of MFAF’s goals, Internet is only one part of the larger project and campaign. This is not only true for the Unsung Peace Heroes campaign but for all of MFAF’s work. Butterfly Works uses multiple media types in their work as well so the multimedia approach for Unsung Peace Heroes was familiar to both organizations and important to achieving their goals. Butterfly Works and MFAF used a multimedia approach, including a website, newspaper ads, radio and television appearances, participation in live events and word-of-mouth. (Melissa Tully) icon Type • SMS • Othe • word of mouth • Morning shows • Twitter • Facebook case studies Learn more… blogs/articles TIPS: think about how your audience commonly views/accesses information)- and what way they are most likely to view information during a crisis.
Your Campaign, Messaging and Communication Strategy Very important too is also the communication strategy of the organization, which should explains what the platform is and what it isnot.(Anahi Ayala Iacucci) • The communication strategy can be: • Announcement of the project/service • Setting expectations • Plan for responding to individual messages • Communicating information to different audiences The Unsung Peace Heroes project in Kenya used a multimedia publicity strategy, including placing ads in the newspaper, making TV and radio appearances, handing out fliers, participating in local peace events and having an online presence, to spread the work about their project and to collect nominations of Peace Heroes throughout Kenya. This strategy allowed them to target various diverse audiences and in the end they received over 500 nominations for Unsung Peace Heroes throughout Kenya. (Melissa Tully) icon Type How will you inform the crowd about your project? How will you communicate with your partners/audience? case studies Learn more… blogs/articles TIPS Be sure that you get clearly the message out: what you want to do, why and if the issue is urgent or not. Example materials
Information Communication Technology (ICT), Privacy and Security Information Security and Privacy can be a very important consideration for many projects that use the Ushahidi Instance. We encourage you and your organization to think about how the Ushahidi instance may affect community/organization safety, and the impact that mapping and information will have on your audience and partners. icon Type If you answer yes to any of these questions, or feel that this topic is important to your project -- we encourage you to take the mini assessment tool here………. Will your project be dealing with sensitive information? Will your project potentially place the users or partners at risk? Does the government strictly control information in your project area? Are you prepared to address any information/ privacy breaches if they should happen? Who will be responsible? Take the assessment now. case studies instance sites blogs/articles Learn more…
Technology Ushahidiisasoftware, which means it requires access to certain technologies. What is the local use of ICT in the country? How do people in the community use the internet and mobile phones? TIPS- How do your partners and audience communicate now? What are they comfortable using? (cell phones, sms, internet) What do they have access to and can afford? Take the tech assesment! Learn more… case studies blogs/articles
Resources & Funding Here are some tips to think about when looking for funding to support your project or idea: ‣ How does my proposal address the problem? ‣ What are the goals and objectives of the program? ‣ What is the budget and timeline for the project? ‣ Can you partner with others for non-financial support? ‣ How will the project be sustainable? ‣ Is there a geographic focus? (funders often support specific locations) ‣ What are the expected outcomes and how will you measure them? Funding Uses Examples of how you might use your funding: ‣ Funding a SMS shortcode number to allow people to send free SMS ‣ Funding an SMS alert campaign ‣ Funding a web designer to customize your Ushahidi deployment ‣ Funding a PR campaign: newspaper ads, online ads, to raise awareness about your Ushahidi instance ‣ Funding a data entry resource if you are migrating existing data into the Ushahidi platform TIPS: Have a clear budget and take into account advertisement campaign, dev work, PHONE EXPENSES if you use SMS and alerts, server space, and time to dedicate to the project. Also fundamental, have a monitoring &evaluation line in the budget and in your project plan and do periodical review of the project according to goals. (Anahi Ayala Iacucci)
ResourcesHere are some resources that you may need. Fill out the cost that you will need too TIPS Make sure you have a clear budget and think about the resources that will you need for your project. TIPS “Find out about any potential licenses you might need, for example for holding a competition, this can often be bureaucratic and take time to organise. NOTE Calculate time for the design and printing or production of all your materials, making a website or flyer and printing it can take a few weeks. (Butterfly Works Toolbox)
Planning & Project timeline Planning your project, and allowing enough time to prepare for volunteers, customization, campaigns, and partner/community engagement will make you project more successful. • TIPS • If you are looking to gather, share and make decisions with many different people & partners. • Consider: • Planning meetings& workshops early to make sure that all partners have similar expectations and understand their roles/responsibilities • - Plan your media/advertising campaigns early, determine the cost, and how you will inform people of your project and set expectations. PROJECT EXAMPLES ELECTION MONITORING Staff and Volunteers for the Uchaguzi Kenya Project ( 2010 Kenya Referedum) – recommend 3-6 months for planning around a specific election days. icon Type Example project timelines blogs/articles Learn more…
Below is information about your project that you entered in the first toolbox (On the online tool, what you have filled out in the previous panels will automatically show up here!) Project Goal/Objectives/anticipated impact _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ Reasons for mapping _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ Partnerships _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ Information/Communication _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ Marketing Media Plan _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ Technology Assessment _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ I would like to make changes….. Let’s move on!
THANK YOU FOR COMPLETING TOOLBOX #1! Please save this file and add your name to the title. Then return it to Heather Leson:hleson@ushahidi.com. You will receive a report from toolbox #1 to use in your project. In your email please send comments on how you would like this tool improved or changed! Thank you for being a very important part of Ushahidi’s User community!