One of Mapeo’s greatest features is having custom configurations, which gives the mapping project focus, identity and acessibility, as many community members are from oral-first cultures and literacy isn’t part of their daily lives. But creating a custom configuration for Mapeo isn’t as acessible an experience as we’d wish, requiring some design and research skills […]

The Earth Defenders Toolkit has been translated into Khmer, Swahili, Thai, and Vietnamese, in its entirety. All of the content that has been published to date is now available in these four languages, in addition to English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French.

Digital Democracy is looking for an Earth Defenders Toolkit Community Steward for a 12-month contract (with potential long-term), starting as soon as possible. You will steward community engagement for the Earth Defenders Toolkit, and crosscutting outreach projects by Digital Democracy’s Programs team. Your role will be to expand community engagement with the Earth Defenders Toolkit, building […]

After some months of visioning, we are excited to share the first EDT quarterly newsletter! We are entering the next phase of the Earth Defenders Toolkit initiative! Thanks to the generous support of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, we are moving into the 2nd phase of the Earth Defenders Toolkit Initiative! The toolkit was first […]

The Train the Trainers methodology is a tool for empowering communities to build confidence and skills in a culturally relevant and accessible way while promoting as much autonomy and sustainability as possible.

The Earth Defenders Toolkit is a collection of apps that support local autonomy of Indigenous lands, giving communities ownership of critical data and reducing the need for outside support.  The toolkit, which includes mapping apps like ‘Mapeo,’ keep the needs of Indigenous communities at the forefront, overcoming barriers inherent to technology, like participation and security.  […]

Dawn Martin-Hill, a professor at McMaster University, introduced Terrastories, a geo-based storytelling app, to the Haudenosaunee people of the Great Lakes to help them protect their land and water as well as safeguard invaluable knowledge. A main goal of her work is to empower and support Indigenous youths, and she has also helped create a […]

Since the launch of the Earth Defenders Toolkit, a number of people have suggested that it would be nice to have a space for us to regularly share about work being done across the globe. We have our forum, but folks are also interested in having a regularly scheduled phone call, where we could have […]

Global Voices interviewed Rudo Kemper, geographer and a program manager at Digital Democracy, via email, who explained different aspects of the toolkit.

We’ve received inquiries both from local community members who want to share the Earth Defenders Toolkit resources with their own community, as well as from allies who are working with a community and would like to know more about how to bring and introduce the Earth Defenders Toolkit. In this post, we offer several concrete pathways for using the Toolkit.