Five years ago, Crowd2Map led an entirely volunteer-driven campaign to map uncharted villages in rural Tanzania. Teams have trained a global community of over 14,000 mappers to outline buildings and roads from satellite images. After maps are verified by their online community, volunteers on the ground include any locally known sites. They then educate their communities on how to read and print maps to promote economic development, education, and girls’ rights. Since 2015, Crowd2Map volunteers have mapped over 4.5 million buildings.

These maps have empowered a wealth of communities. Zeze, a local village with around 9,000 people, was not on a map until as recently as 2015. Since then, they have increased investment in community development and environmental education. Crowd2Map is also focused on mapping routes for local police and activists to better rescue girls at risk of female genital mutilation. These maps, downloaded on phones and accessible offline, allow them to navigate quickly to remote, unsigned villages in the middle of the night.

Today, you can join thousands of global volunteers in transforming lives. If you would like to get involved, you can find Crowd2Map’s mapping projects here. Full onboarding and instructions are on their Slack channel, linked here, where you can also request feedback and connect with an online community of mappers. Together, we can ensure everyone is mapped and everyone is counted – join us today!