The Gorilla Highlands initiative is about putting southwestern Uganda and northwestern Rwanda onto the global map – and on 2-3 June 2016 there will be a special opportunity to do that practically.

The Ugandan OpenStreetMap community, with support from the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) and Edirisa are teaming up for two days of training with an ambitious goal: to make the best online map of our region. Look at this OpenStreetMap (OSM) example:

Lake Bunyonyi‘s Bwama Island and Bushara Island show incredible detail (thanks to Bert Araali, a Belgian OSM user living in Fort Portal) while there are a wrongly named “Habukara” and “Munanira”. We want such detail everywhere and such mistakes to be corrected by the mapping community in our region!

There is another important level to this plan: it will help tour guides in our region get comfortable with map reading. The program of our training on 2-3 June 2016 will cover:

– An understanding of mapping and maps in general
– The basics of map reading
– OSM editing tools, examples of OSM usage like Mapbox
– Practical activities showing how one can map her/his environment

We shall have two trainers take the participants from theory to practice; to map the area around Bufuka peninsula, Lake Bunyonyi.

Interested in joining? It will cost you only USh 50,000 for food and accommodation; the rest is all sponsored by HOT and Edirisa. For your best experience and involvement we expect you to come with a smartphone that runs Android 4.2 (or later) and/or a laptop. Although there might be possibilities of sharing the tools in small teams, it’s essential that you bring at least one of the two gadgets (perhaps you can borrow one from a friend?). Apply here now.