Community-based Mapping

COMMUNITY-BASED MAPPING GSLL 1510 Course Tuition:  $390 2 CEUs Duration: 5 weeks

Click below to register!

Mapping can be a powerful tool for communities to use to better manage their resources, plan for the future, record and utilize local knowledge, raise awareness about areas of concern in their environmental and social landscape, and communicate their priorities and concerns to external agencies or government officials. This course will explore theories, ethics, applications, and methods of community-based mapping and its role in participatory learning and action as well as larger processes of integrated community-based development. This course, while drawing on many of the recent case studies, academic writings, and reports from the field, will be highly interactive and will emphasize the sharing of experiences, ideas, and insights from course participants.

Upon completion of this course participants will be able to:

• Understand the basic principles, theories, and ethics of Community-based mapping and its role in Community-based development
• Identify which mapping methods and tools are most appropriate to achieve the desired objectives in your community
• Locate and utilize existing geographic information data sets, online and elsewhere, for specific project areas
• Learn some basic mapping functions including projecting GPS coordinates onto a map, downloading and projecting satellite images, creating features from aerial imagery, and more.

Testimonials from Past Course Participants for Community-based Mapping:

“I am grateful to this course to make me think about space and power in such pronounced and palpable terms.” – UNDP Employee

“The assertion that mapping is power and that there are differences between mapping and community based mapping stuns me. This whole course is really an eye opener…These assigned readings make me think…One of the most profound readings was on the ethical considerations. More thinking – what am I trying to do here. As part of my job, merely asking programs to use maps of someone else’s making to communicate where they are and what they’re proposing to do in those locations. Not so simple, eh?”