The Department of Social Welfare and Development-Information and Communication Technology Service (DSWD-ICTMS) joined the celebration of Women’s Month with “MAPAbabae: OSM Workshop and Mapathon with Women and for Women” last March 22, 2018, Thursday, 1:30-5PM.

MAPAbabae aims to map women and child-friendly spaces/facilities (as well as other mapping priorities of women) in the country through a collaborative (OSM) and gender-inclusive (not limited to women partcipation!) approach.

The program started off with an Opening Remarks from Dir. Noy Castro, mentioning the importance of having an integrated georaphic information system (GIS) in the Department with emphasis on mapping locations of facilities and resources for vulnerable sectors i.e. women, children, PWDs and senior citizens. We had two (2) speakers, Mike Labrador and Jen Alconis-Ayco, who shared their mapping experiences with women and for women, and another two (2), Gellie Apolinario and Dianne Bencito, who discussed about and demonstrated OSM. This was followed by a mapathon and sharing of mapping experience by the participants, then closing remarks from Andi Tabinas, our OIC-Division chief (wooo!).

Most of the partcipants are new mappers and they learned about collaborative community mapping through OSM. Based on their feedback, they are very willing to make use of the technology and contribute to it, either be it for work or volunteerism! :)

We used the hashtag #DSWDMAPAbabae as changeset comment and as of now, we have 446 map changes! I will be posting the mapping priorities and tags to use once finalized.

My takeaway: Mapping is an inclusive and powerful tool, let’s exhaust its capabilities. Right now, there is a disproportion on men and women mappers (97/3, Lechner 2011). So why should women map? As Ate Jen mentioned on her presentation, “(Men and women have) different perspectives in a shared landscape.”

Empower a women today by encouraging her visibility on the map!

(All photos from @GOwin)