Who is the Ford Foundation and why do they care about Ushahidi?

The Ford Foundation is an independent, nonprofit grant-making organization. For 75 years it has worked with courageous people on the frontlines of social change worldwide, guided by its mission to strengthen democratic values, reduce poverty and injustice, promote international cooperation, and advance human achievement. With headquarters in New York, the foundation has offices in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

What are these funds for?
Ushahidi’s tools are used around the world in various activities, from Crowdmapping, Crisis Mapping, Citizen based reporting of elections like what is happening now in Egypt and DRC, and so many other uses that are too numerous to mention. Ford foundations support will help Ushahidi continue providing the tools and support to organizations using its technology worldwide.

Localization and outreach is key to adoption of Crowdsourcing tools. Ushahidi is committed to exploring ways of extending its reach and availability of its tools around the world. Continuing to prod the humanitarian technology community to explore new ways of data gathering, aggregation and visualization through Crowdmap.

When the Ushahidi platform was written as an open source project in 2008, the vision was to have a platform that any individual or organization could easily deploy in any situation. While providing the software for free to anyone to install on his or her own servers has worked well so far, we have realized that there was a need to rapidly deploy Ushahidi without any required technical acumen in the shortest amount of time possible. The answer to this challenge is Crowdmap. This ability is useful to change agents big and small. From small NGOs to international organizations like Amnesty International who recently used the platform to gather information about human rights in Saudi Arabia.

Special Plugins and enhancements to Ushahidi software
Our focus on 2012 will be to continue to make both the Ushahidi core platform and Crowdmap accessible by decoupling features from the core code and continue to grow the plug-in applications. In addition, we will be working on improving the user-interface and increase the available themes for customization. Finally we will be working on making both faster and more secure and as always easier for the wider community to contribute to.
Making a version of Ushahidi that takes into account the special needs of activists or people working in highly repressive regimes is a challenge and an opportunity to work on in 2012 and beyond. We have began working on a debian module that has special hacks to help with privacy issues. Ford Foundation support will help us to continue this.

The challenge of using Ushahidi in areas of low bandwidth still remains; we will continue our development efforts to tackle this problem. Localization and worldwide adoption are interlinked, thus efforts to improve the translation of the tools will require continued support.

Mobile Applications have always been part and parcel of not only the Ushahidi platform, but also part of the strategy as the tools are used around the world. The iPhone and Android apps are already in use, and we are working hard on getting a Java app rewritten for use on Blackberry and other Java enabled phones. The mobile development team is continually responding to feedback and updating the various mobile apps.

SwiftRiver Integration into Crowdmap
The SwiftRiver technology that Ushahidi has been working on will need to be integrated into Crowdmap to enable current users to benefit from a curation and data analysis capability.

Training and Outreach
Based on our early realization that technology is only one small component of what it takes to implement a tool like Ushahidi successfully We are increasing our focus on building and growing the community around Ushahidi. We currently have a wiki and support forum online, a community resource guide page on our website, and have already hosted regular “intro to Ushahidi workshops”, or Ushahidi 101 sessions that cover different aspects and different use cases for the platform. We host these sessions at various places around the world and live stream online.

The community section of our website that will be dedicated exclusively to the wider community of Ushahidi implementers. It hosts resources, case studies, themes, plugins and forums for the end users to learn, interact and share.

Finally, the one of the biggest use of the funds is in community engagement. We have an incredible Community Engagement Director on our team, Heather Leson, whose job it is to connect and communicate between our diverse network of deployers. The people who use Ushahidi in 132 countries around the world.

What we’re finding is that we can have many tools, even leverage outside volunteers and community members to help carry the load for training and linking between the communities of deployers globally, but that it is not enough. We strive to do more, and are grateful to The Ford Foundation for helping us reach our goals.

Who is the Omidyar Network and why do they care about Ushahidi

Omidyar has funded Digg, the Wikimedia Foundation, Creative Commons, WITNESS and the Sunlight Foundation. Why should they fund us?

A good starting point is their boilerplate, which states:

Omidyar Network is a philanthropic investment firm dedicated to harnessing the power of markets to create opportunity for people to improve their lives. Established in 2004 by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, the organization invests in and helps scale innovative organizations to catalyze economic and social change. To date, Omidyar Network has committed more than $300 million to for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations that foster economic advancement and encourage individual participation across multiple investment areas, including microfinance, property rights, government transparency, and social media. To learn more about Omidyar Network, please visit www.omidyar.com.

Where Ushahidi fits in is their Media, Markets and Transparency section, specifically in the way that the Ushahidi platform can be utilized around the world for greater government transparency. Ushahidi’s innovative use of technology to strengthen democracy by amplifying citizen voices and its ability to connect potentially millions of individuals to information that could transform their lives are what drew Omidyar Network’s interest.

Where is all this money going to go?

Taking on funding like this, for a small organization like ours, isn’t something you do lightly. We sat down earlier this year and worked out a strategic plan that highlighted the main areas that we thought the organization should be going.

These included:

1. Dedicated core development resources for the Ushahidi engine
We needed to move from just two core developers (David Kobia and Henry Addo) so we recently brought on Ken Kasina and Brian Herbert to help carry the load, especially as far working to address issues and feature requests that have been brought to our attention by Ushahidi implementers. Additionally, Caleb Bell has joined the team to work on the front-end, so that the programmers can remain dedicated to the back-end work. Covering everything from the core architecture to visualizations, mobile apps, API, security, translations and plugins these five individuals, led by David Kobia, will be working with the greater developer community to make it happen.

2. Strategic Partnerships and Community Building
A major challenge for Ushahidi in the past year, has been balancing the need to develop a robust core platform, while responding to the needs of the wider community that is looking to implement Ushahidi in various ways. A key focus for us in the coming year is helping nurture the network of Ushahidi implementers who can help us ensure that the platform is having an impact, who can help us make sure that our feet remain firmly on the ground as we scale, and who can share their knowledge and experiences with us. In addition, the Ushahidi platform has seen a surge in demand from international organizations in the media, humanitarian and human rights space this past year looking to understand better how Ushahidi can work for them. Patrick Meier has joined to the team to serve as a point of contact for international organizations looking to implement Ushahidi, to help provide expertise internally on how to respond to the needs of humanitarian organizations, and along with other members of the Ushahidi community help play the role of a “network weaver”, building relationships especially with the academic community.

3. A Kenya Focus
Establishing a physical hub in Kenya is important to Ushahidi for several reasons. First, while we will continue to remain an international organization with staff based around the world, we feel it is important to establish a physical presence in Kenya, the country where the idea of Ushahidi was born. Second, with the upcoming arrival of the undersea cable and the already buzzing tech scene in Kenya, we feel having a presence in Nairobi will expose us to a rich talent pool and give us a great testing ground for building an Ushahidi ecosystem. Erik Hersman will relocate to Nairobi to help manage the hub

The hub will serve as a physical space to host Ushahidi activities and volunteer developers in Nairobi, as well as a community space for the local tech community.

The hub will also service our in-depth testing and deployments in Kenya. Kenya is currently the only country in the world where we will have over a dozen installations of Ushahidi running by the end of 2009. This offers a unique opportunity to track what happens when you have an “ecosystem” of Ushahidi installations in a particular geographic location e.g. Does the potential for early warning crisis increase? Do patterns emerge when the information collected by the various Ushahidi installations is merged?

4. The Swift River initiative
Swift River is an Ushahidi initiative that serves to answer two important problems for us. First, verification of incoming information. Second, dealing with massive amounts of citizen-generated data in real-time. Since we announced it earlier this year, we’ve been unable to commit adequate resources to it. We’ll be bringing on at least one full-time resource to work with the other people and organizations working on Swift.

5. Scaling the organization
This is the mundane, but ultimately critical capabilities that we need to handle the growth. While we’re doing a number of things within the organization itself, the most important item is establishing a Board of Directors for Ushahidi. You can read more about the board here.

CRISIS MAPPING PLATFORM RECEIVES $200,000 GRANT AND BETA RELEASE FOR BROADER GLOBAL IMPACT

ORLANDO, Fla. (May 7, 2009) – Crisis-mapping platform Ushahidi, a mobile-phone and Web-based tool, received a $200,000 grant to aid in further development of its platform. Ushahidi is also expanding its global offering of crisis information by releasing the open Beta of its platform as well as information collected from citizen reports, most recently used to report cases and locations of the swine flu (see http://swineflu.ushahidi.com).

The $200,000 grant Ushahidi received from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation allows it to continue developing its platform for the duration of 2009. An initial grant from Humanity United funded Ushahidi’s development and progress since 2008; the recent funding from the MacArthur Foundation is critical to Ushahidi’s growth and sustainability.

While continuing to refine the core architecture, Ushahidi will also focus on new initiatives, including Swift River. Additionally, the funding allows the company to add more developers and enhances its ability to plan for long-term growth and sustainability.

“This funding is a great measure of confidence in us as an organization,” says Ory Okolloh, Ushahidi Executive Director. “We’ve already achieved so much in the past year, and we know the best is yet to come.”

Moreover, the open Beta release of the Ushahidi code base, which can be used worldwide to crowdsource crisis information and visualize that data, is now available for free at http://download.ushahidi.com.

Ushahidi provides individuals and organizations around the globe with a simple and effective platform to manage SMS and Web-related news. Users can report information shared by the public, which is used to quickly disseminate crucial information during events such as political disruption or natural disasters and epidemics, such as earthquakes and the swine flu, as experienced around the world in the past week.

Though Ushahidi has been in Alpha since October, it has been deployed in several unique environments. Using Ushahidi, two-dozen Alpha testing organizations now have deployed it to Web sites around the world, from Madagascar and Pakistan to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya.

As of late, Ushahidi is mapping confirmed and suspected cases of the swine flu around the world while allowing citizens to report information related to the crisis. More information is found at http://swineflu.ushahidi.com.

Earlier in 2009, Al Jazeera’s new media team used Ushahidi to gather and map information related to the conflict in Gaza: http://labs.aljazeera.net/warongaza. Currently, Ushahidi plays a key role in the 2009 Indian elections: http://votereport.in.

Developed by a group of volunteer developers and designers, Ushahidi benefits from representatives located in Kenya, South Africa, Malawi, Ghana, Liberia, the Netherlands, Canada, India, Pakistan, Qatar and the United States, Ushahidi’s extensive global roots aid in its growth and utilization.

About Ushahidi
Ushahidi is a nonprofit organization founded with the goal of creating a free and open-source platform to help with early warning by aggregating and visualizing citizen reports in disaster and crisis scenarios. Ushahidi, which means “testimony” in Swahili, was originally deployed in Kenya during the post-election violence in January 2008. It continues to grow with a strong African-driven development team from around the continent. Learn more at www.ushahidi.com/newsroom.

About the MacArthur Foundation
The MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, the Foundation works to defend human rights, advance global conservation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and society. More information is at www.macfound.org.

About Humanity United
Humanity United is an independent grant-making organization committed to building a world where modern-day slavery and mass atrocities are no longer possible. Humanity United supports efforts that empower affected communities and address the root causes of conflict and modern-day slavery to build lasting peace. Learn more at www.humanityunited.org.

Over the last few months, I have treated the task of growing and building Ushahidi very much like how one would grow and build a business, or one would run a start-up (or rather how I imagine one would do it since I’ve had no experience doing either).  It has been a challenge, mostly because we have not had the luxury of pre-planning, and because we have operated with limited resources and been a largely virtual organization.   From the beginning, we’ve sort of just taken a rapid proto-type and growth approach, often figuring out things as we go along and relying on the fact that we really believe in what we are trying to build as our compass.

In addition, while there is a lot more structure to us then when we first started, and while we are now planning, and looking at metrics, and thinking more strategically than ever…it has been important for me to make sure that we retain that element of quick-out-of-the-box thinking that has made Ushahidi possible…back when it was just an idea that we built on nothing more than our passion for Kenya (OK, it was not that long ago but it seems like eons sometimes given how much progress we’ve made ) .

Balancing the two is easier said than done, especially when trying to navigate the donor funding world, which sometimes (I think) struggles to figure out how to support us and our non-traditional approach.    Nevertheless, we soldier on, driven by the great support we’ve gotten from the community that has evolved around Ushahidi (thank you!) and from the recognition we have received in the media.

For us to be featured in Forbes magazine is a big deal for many reasons – it speaks to our entrepreneurial approach to social problems, it speaks to the incredible talent we have in Africa that often doesn’t receive the recognition it deserves in the international media, and it says to me that we are on to something.

So today, I will revel in the great coverage we are getting…and save my worries about how we’ll make payroll next year for tomorrow.