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 launched in June 2021 and now we are thrilled to announce new support to expand the work.
We plan to add new resources, tools and guides on the toolkit while expanding access to new communities who are on the frontlines of local efforts to fight climate change. We’ll keep you updated.
Help us build a GIS data sources library for communities!
We are currently preparing a database of downloadable GIS data to publish on the Earth Defenders Toolkit site, and are soliciting sources.
So far, we have consolidated this library of GIS data sources. If you know of any national, regional, or global repositories of GIS data that could be beneficial for communities and should be on this list, please share those in the Earth Defenders Toolkit forum or submit them here.
Resources to offer a workshop on the Earth Defenders Toolkit
The Earth Defenders Toolkit is a collaborative platform of resources for communities all across the globe, and we are thrilled to share a new compilation of resources for others to share the contents of the Earth Defenders Toolkit with their communities, organizations or other circles.
Among them, you will find:
- Presentations templates in English, Spanish and Portuguese. You can use them as they are, or adapt them with your own content and language to better fit your audience.
- 5-min walkthrough video of the Earth Defenders Toolkit in Spanish, English, and without sound. We include the scripts in Spanish, English and Portuguese too, in case you want to add narration in your own language.
- Ideas on how to run a session on the Earth Defenders Toolkit, covering the agenda, ice breaker exercises, discussion items, etc.
Feel free to download and modify them according to your needs. If you want to share other assets with the whole community, please share them on the Earth Defenders Toolkit Forum and we will include them in the library.
Mapeo launched a new site for support materials
The Mapeo app team launched a new Mapeo support materials site, which provides an introduction to the Mapeo tools and a collection of training & technical resources to support Mapeo users! ? Check it out here.
If you are planning to use Mapeo (or even if you already use it), this could be very helpful to you. The site is organized as a comprehensive library with guides, visuals and tips to accompany users through the use of both Mapeo Mobile and Desktop. It covers essential considerations when planning a Mapeo project – which can be very helpful in the initial steps of thinking through a project’s goals, participants, data flow, etc. – and provides an overview of how Mapeo is being used in other projects.
The collection also includes clear explanations about how the peer-to-peer system for saving and syncing data works in Mapeo, step-by-step instructions for customizing the apps, as well as Troubleshooting and FAQ sections. In this blog post, you can read about the main sections of the guide and some tips on how to use these resources offline.
Currently, the site is available in English and in Spanish (for most of its content) and is planned to be translated to other languages (beginning with Portuguese) in a couple of months.
Terrastories released new features
Terrastories released some new exciting features! Among them, there are:
- ⛰️ 3D Terrain toggle for online maps
- ? Audio for place name pronunciation
- ?️ Clustering places on the map
- ? Setting optional map bounding boxes
- ☑️ Filter stories using Topic, Language, and Speaker’s Community fields
- ? Increased Spanish and Portuguese localization
Read this blog post to know more about this news and about the future of Terrastories. You can stay up to date with this at https://terrastories.io, our Github organization, or @TerrastoriesApp on Twitter.
Terrastories is a free and open-source product that is mostly volunteer-built and stewarded. If you want to contribute with development, translation, or even donations check here.
? More on Terrastories: The Six Nations Polytechnic Academy integrates the place-based storytelling tool Terrastories into the Indigenous-focused curriculum of a high school classroom! Read this interview with Chris Martin and Kali Anevich, two educators at the Haudenosaunee-governed Indigenous educational institute, to learn more about how they are using Terrastories.
Contribute to EDT!
If you want to get involved with the Earth Defenders Toolkit, check out the many ways you can contribute to the platform. You can also join our Discord EDT channel or the EDT Forum.
Acknowledgment: Earth Defenders Toolkit is being built in solidarity, consultation, and co-creation with Indigenous and marginalized communities in Latin America, Asia, and Sub-Saharan African at every point of the way. We are deeply grateful to our partners who are working to achieve transformative change, and help us understand how we can best serve their needs.