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Personal note

Sorry for the very delayed posting! 🥹

🎉 I can’t express how overwhelmingly grateful I am to everyone who made this idea a reality. ✨ Your passion in making the best map OpenStreetMap, and building inclusive communities is unstoppable. ❤️‍🔥

Let’s make the #OpenStreetMap the best and most inclusive space for all ✨🗺️

=Arnalie

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Key highlights: We are happy to share the accomplishments of the 2024 OSMF Membership Campaign: 1) ~ 392 sign up’s from March, most of them were through the Active Contributor Membership Program; 2) there are now members in 16 new countries!; 3) Four (4) countries made 15+ new members: Libya, Niger, Nigeria and Colombia; and 4) one of our team leads, Priscovia, became part of the Membership Working Group (MWG).

In our effort to grow and diversify OSMF memberships, early this year, we ran a 3-month long OSMF Membership Campaign with volunteers from all over the world.

I thought that the new year is the best time to encourage contributors to become OSMF members by spreading awareness about OSMF membership and the Active Contributor Program. The OSMF Membership Campaign Drive idea came up when a community member from OSM Africa asked about the membership make up.

Figure 1 Figure 1. OSMF Membership range per Country Source: as of 16 January 2024, Membership Working Group

Thanks to Membership Working Group (MWG) and Dorothea for providing data and assisting in the analysis! By examining the membership make up, we saw that there is an opportunity to grow membership in regions and countries where there are no or very few OSMF members.

Bringing our Collective Power together

Figure2 Figure 2. 2024 OSMF Membership Campaign Volunteers’ Meetup

Acknowledging that I cannot do this alone, I convened a team of dedicated volunteers to run the 2024 OSMF Membership Campaign Drive. With the main aim to grow and diversify OSMF memberships, our objectives and action plan were to:

  1. Promote OSMF memberships (normal, associate, active contributor) with support from Communications Working Group (CWG)
  2. Provide general stats on membership make up (per region / per country) with support from MWG
  3. Collaborate with regional/national community leaders especially in regions/countries where OSMF membership is low

The volunteer campaign team met once a month and was divided into two sub-teams: Mapmakers/Visual Comms team, and the Campaign Ambassadors team. Each sub-team has 3 co-leaders and we meet every other 2weeks. We brainstormed for a month before initiating the campaign, and when it’s time, we were on full gear mode 😎

During the course of the campaign, we:

  • Published one OSM blog post (thanks to CWG) and personal OSM diaries

  • Posted and shared posts that spread awareness about OSMF Membership as well as members testimonials
  • Organized 2 webinars, in English and French
  • Held at least 10 meetings
  • Maintained a WhatsApp group to coordinate efforts, connect with each others and build trust

Figure 3 Figure 3. Communication materials (blog, poster testimonials, OSM Diaries, videos, and webinar) to spread awareness about OSMF Memberships

There are now OSMF members in 16 new countries!

We are happy to share the key highlights and accomplishments of the campaign:

  • ~ 392 sign up’s from March, most of them were through the Active Contributor Membership Program
  • There are now members in 16 new countries!
  • Four (4) countries made 15+ new members: Libya, Niger, Nigeria and Colombia
  • One of our team leads, Priscovia became part of the MWG

Figure 4 Figure 4. Membership sign-up per Month (March to July) per membership type

Lessons Learned and Challenges

We held a retrospective to close the campaign, below are boards that show what went well and what could be improved. Through open collaboration, we hope to continue with the campaign on a yearly basis. :)

Figure 5 Figure 5. Retrospective board exercise: What went well?

Figure 6 Figure 6. Retrospective board exercise: What could be improved?

Expressing Gratitude

The 2024 OSMF Membership Campaign would not be successful without the dedication and time of the following contributors:

OSMF: Communications WG, Membership WG and Dorothea

2024 OSMF Membership Campaign volunteers:

  • Campaign Ambassadors:
  1. Team Leads: Geoffrey Kateregga, Priscovia Ng’ambi, Charles Chilufya
  2. Team Members: Ezekiel Edgar Kiariro, Anuradha Rajayanake, Daniel Akor, Emmanuel Alio, Kapay Yongololo, Mary Marcellinus, Nadaraj Saranya, Hopeful Bafamodei
  • Mapmakers / visual comms designers:
  1. Team Leads: Engelbert Modo, Eka Diweti, Trudy Namitala
  2. Team Members: Arnold Nkwabong, Bienvenu Muluba, Dennis Raylin Chen, James Amattey, Bukenya, Brazil Rittik Singh

Community Leaders:

  • Abdurahman Al Furjani (Libya 🇱🇾)
  • Andres Gomez (Colombia 🇨🇴)
  • Victor Sunday (Nigeria 🇳🇬)
  • Samaila Alio (Niger 🇳🇪)
  • Christian Shadrack (Democratic Republic of Congo 🇨🇩)
  • Trudy Namitala (Zambia 🇿🇲)
  • Geoffrey Kateregga (Uganda 🇺🇬)
  • Telvino Américo Manuel and Wendy Muttise (Mozambique 🇲🇿)
  • Marina Rafael and Zaida Nkhole (Angola 🇦🇴)
  • Ibrahim Abdulai Kargbo (Sierra Leone 🇸🇱)

Discussion

Comment from ENGELBERT MODO on 25 October 2024 at 03:35

Thanks Arna. I loved this experience 🥰🥰

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