The OpenStreetMap Foundation had quite recently launched a worldwide membership campaign with the objective of growing and diversifying OSMF membership in regions where there are very low or no OSMF members. And I am proud to say that I was/am part of this campaign. I should say that it is also my very first time volunteering for the OpenStreetMap Foundation and the experience has been & continues to be very enriching to say the least. In late January, I had responded to a call for volunteers & campaigners to help grow OSMF membership on Slack & since then, I’ve been part of a very diverse, talented & committed group of campaigners & volunteers.

On the first few virtual meet-ups via Google meet, I had promptly signed up for the visual comms/mapmakers role as I believed I could use whatever little designing skills & experiences I had to aid in creating & designing comms material for the campaign. In doing so, I had been thrown into a mix of incredible volunteers from around the world. Our work as visual comms/mapmakers volunteers had revolved around creating posters, pubmats, infographics, maps, etc. and these materials feature a lot about the OpenStreetMap Foundation, testimonials, how to join, membership types, why join, etc. However, generating these materials wasn’t an easy feat as the process often involved planning, a lot of discussions, facilitating, reviewing, and amending the materials as per suggestions/recommendations from the OSMF Board.

I believe that this volunteering opportunity has helped me grow in ways I wouldn’t have imagined because in the short period of only two months, I have learnt a lot about community, having being part of a group with shared or common interest but also acknowledging the different ideas, strengths & capabilities that each one of us had & brought to the table allowed us to effectively work together to bring about the outputs we were tasked to deliver.

So, shout out to the visual comms/mapmakers team for a great job on the comms materials for the membership campaign, they have been absolutely superb on the job/role!

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