Ushahidi, which translates to “testimony” in Swahili, was developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election violence in 2008. Since then, thousands have used our crowdsourcing tools to raise their voice.
The app was developed in partnership with Omidyar Network, Cisco, Ford Foundation, Google.org, Humanity United, MacArthur Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Knight Foundation, and the USAID (from the american people).
"Data collection: Gather submissions from anyone, anytime, anywhere"
"Data management: Manage and triage reports with filters and workflows"
"Data visualization: Map submissions and chart what happened"
"Automatic alerts: Receive alerts about changes and update"
"Enterprise systems:Let our team help you build and scale your deployment"
The Ushahidi Ecosystem has aimed to serve people that have limited access to the world, for example, areas around (East) Africa (“hard-to-reach places”). One of the event the platform focused on is the post-election violence in Kenya 2008, whereas people have raised their voice to the world via the handy technological tools.
Most of the partners of the platform (world leading foundations/organisations: e.g. Resilience Network Initiative) have used the tools to increase the access on relevant information in order to assist the citizens/populations that need helps. Furthermore, to protect marginalised communities.
“Anyone can use Ushahidi, but traditionally it has been a tool used by Crisis Responders, Human Rights Reporters, and Citizens & Governments (such as election monitoring or corruption reporters).”
The development of the system was funded by their partners (e.g. Making All Voices Count with $55M). the general publics can donate via Facebook or create a fundraiser for Ushahidi via Facebook.
“Ushahidi provides open source crowdsourcing software for responding to crisis, helping human rights, and increasing transparency.”
For the event of post-election violence in Kenya 2008, map reports are created to flow the voices.
With the mobile apps (iOS/Android) of the system, data collection can gather other’s voice from multiple sources such as SMS, emails, Twitter and RSS. These data can also be managed and formed into visual charts and maps. Other functions such as alerts and customer services are also provided.
The received data can be managed and visualised into charts or map tiles (e.g. open street maps or satellite maps). The data is visualized in the panel of “Visualize Your Story “with four modes of visual features.
The users can either collect data or send data with the mobile apps or on the software their developed. In current stage the most engagement from the users are to gather submissions from the populations that need helps. In the future, users are able to submit reports and maps from their mobile apps.
The functions of the system are built based on a modern PHP stack. The user interface is built with JS, HTML and CSS. Therefore, the development can be supported by the code libraries. And hence it is an open source software, user can customised the structure to match the user habits. Volunteers are also welcome to integrate the system.