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Africa : Ushahidi

Mission Statement
Ushahidi's goal is to create the simplest way of aggregating information from the public for use in crisis response.

Visit their site: www.ushahidi.com/

Organization Contacts
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Organization Details

Ushahidi, which means "testimony" in Swahili, is an online platform that allows individuals and organizations to collect and visualize information.

Ushahidi is under the leadership Oly Okolloh, who serves as the organization's executive director.

The website was created in the aftermath of violence following  Kenya's 2007 elections. In efforts to track the violence, citizen journalists used the site to map incidents of violence and peace efforts throught the country from reports submitted via the web and through SMS messages.

The site was built for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping. Users of the site can customize plug-ins and extensions for different locales and needs.

The site grew into a focused organization in May 2008. Since then, it has extended to  other countries of Africa and around the world. It  is used by individuals and organizations to track issues in many areas including social, political and environmental issues.

Ushahidi is being currently used to track  Haiti's post-earthquake crisis response,  elections in Sudan and crime in the Atlanta metro area.

 

 


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