It is really a challenging part to work with female for all boys institute. And our society has conservative outlook of treating gender equally.But I believe in gender equality and it is the main key of every successful achievement. Nothing can exist without mutual participation of both boys and girls. And I am decided to do that for the sustainable community. So that we regularly collaboratively works with other educational institutes and local community in our country to increase engaging new mappers, especially girls.

Challenges: we have faced

To engage female mappers always we have faced many challenges. First of all it was the primary challenge to engaging female for all boy’s institute. But we are relentlessly working to increase engaging girls beside boys.

• Ensure a safe environment

  In an under developing country it is a very crucial part is that every woman is concerned about the safe environment for her. So we have to ensure them that the mapping platform is a safe environment to the female.

• Conservative society

  It is the general issue for the under developing country specially in the muslim society. Our society has conservative outlook of treating gender equally.

• Women are not exposed to these technologies in other fields of study

  In our country it is another problem that woman is continuing her studies in any university they are not exposed to these technology is other fields of study.

Solutions: what we do

Engaging female mappers we have organized open training, workshops and seminar in various institutes collaborating with OpenStreetMap Bangladesh Foundation, Bangladesh Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Operational Team, Local Community and other educational Institutes in our country.

• Clear vision of benefits of participation

  First of all it is a solution that motivate the female to the participation in OpenStreetMap. If she has a clear vision of the benefits of participation then she motive herself to work with OpenStreetMap.

• Ensure a safe environment

  Ensuring a safe environment for the female we have to collaborate with local community, society club or educational institutes. As well as teachers, parents and POC of society.

• All voices should be heard

  In the conservative society has conservative outlook of treating gender equally. They always dominate female and never took any decision from them. But we believe in gender equality and it is the main key of every successful achievement.

• Sustainable and effective plan

  To make your sustainability efforts more efficient and effective. A plan is important because it focuses on the set of steps you will need to go through to achieve your ultimate goal, in this case an initiative with lasting impact. A planned effort will almost always be superior to an unplanned, disorganized attempt.

• Passion and Dedication

  The passion and dedication is one of the most dominant and persistent characteristics of human nature to achieve any untouchable goal. It is the main key to any success.

• Collaboration with local communities

  Collaboration is the main key to sustain a group or chapter. We can find all the energetic person from the local communities. They are reliable for the local entity. If we don’t collaborate with Local communities we can’t get any resource persons for the team and we can’t exist in the community.

We have done this difficult job with our passion and dedication as well as collaboration and contribution. We have made a positive wave to everyone’s heart and motive them to collaborate this platform. As a result we have got more than 100 female mappers in our community in the last few years with some top contributors they are ranked (5th, 11th and 49th) on the MissingMaps global leaderboard. We have planned to engage more female participants with our next footprints.

S M Sawan Shariar

Dhaka College, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Sawan Shariar is an enthusiastic person for the mapping community in Bangladesh. He is coming from Economics background of Dhaka College in Bangladesh. He is an adviser and former President (founder) of YouthMappers Dhaka College Chapter. He is an associate member of OpenStreetMap Foundation and a core contributor & trainer of the local OpenStreetMap community. He is one of the core organizers of the Team BHOOT (Bangladesh Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Operational Team) which is an operational wing of OpenStreetMap Bangladesh Foundation (OSMBDF) and involved in local capacity building and supporting mapping initiatives. He is a “2019 Global YouthMappers Challenge Winners”. He has been involved with OSM & Geospatial platforms from 2015. In his journey with OSM he has contributed to several local and international mapping projects and has developed expertise in team coordination, leadership, remote sensing, field data collection and local volunteer organizer. He was the country representative speaker at State of the Map Asia 2018. He has provided training and facilitating to several educational institutes, local communities, NGOs and The Red Cross in Bangladesh. Currently he is leading the Map Your City project by Team BHOOT to cover the whole Bangladesh in map. He has an interest in leadership and elevating youth voices, Sawan is working and volunteered with Team BHOOT and The Red Cross where he has been able to support work that is mainly focused on these topics. He is one of the top contributor in Bangladesh and currently ranked #1 in the Missing Maps global leaderboard. He loves to travel to new places, learn the local culture and taste the local food.

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