Yesterday, a unit of the Social Welfare Department organized and hosted MapaBabae - an OpenStreetMap workshop for Women, with Women - in their central office in Quezon City, to mark Women’s Month, and to introduce OSM as a tool for mapping, and to promote the value of diversity and inclusiveness in any community.

Kudos to the organizers for a refreshing take of mapa-thons, and the interesting discussion about language, empowerment, the potentials of open data in their work.

Jen, draws inspiration from the local Geo Ladies first (and only?) meet-up from 2014

As with other mapping activities, they also learned and edited maps of their communities. However, I found the discussions, and questions, more interesting.

A notable query was: “what’s the tag for baby feeding rooms?” I did a quick search, and to my surprise (and dismay), there’s no accepted convention. And yet, a proposal for baby_care was made in 2015.

I wish to see (and hope to support) more outreach activities to encourage diverse participation, and with more people organizing thematic mapping activities, to help map the communities they live in, work with, or simply because they love to map. The challenge of gender and language (and even the use of “mapa-thon”) as a possible discouragement to mapping was eye-opening.

Helping change the ratio. 17:24

There are a few more photos here.