Hello All, The year 2022 just passed away and we have just stepped into another fresh year, 2023! History shows that in times of disruption, resilience depends on adaptability and decisiveness. With the Pandemic fading out & its restrictions being eased, the last year the OSMBD community groups again started to meet in person again and switched the revival mode on as it is for all the other activities. To ensure the OpenStreetMap community in Bangladesh (OSMBD) thrives as it was before the pandemic, multiple initiatives were taken in 2022 with technical support from Bangladesh Open Innovation Lab (BOIL), generously supported by Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) through Open Mapping Hub Asia Pacific (OMHAP) & their Community Booster Grant Program. All these activities and programs were designed and planned through consultation with the active members of the OpenStreetMap Bangladesh (OSMBD) community, Youth Mappers chapter representatives & regional ambassadors, and supporting stakeholders as much as possible. The initiatives were designed with multiple periodic activities and events on a monthly and quarterly basis in close collaboration with local OSM groups & Youth Mapper Chapters. These activities include but were not limited to Mapathons, training, hackathons, webinars, meetups, and seed-funding nano-scaled projects. the recovery that took hold was deeply promising. Rather than being usual & centralized, the modality of the activities was scattered throughout the country to solidify the decentralization of community activism. All these initiatives/ activities brought some formidable impact to the local OSM ecosystem. The programs/ activities were designed in such a way so that those could make touch with most of the cross-cutting issues of the local OSM ecosystem.
The focus is now on upgrading the OSMBD community volunteerism mechanism & infrastructure. As well as reinforcing preparedness for future crises, it could support efforts to think afresh about the potential of technology to bolster our efforts. We must strengthen our resilience muscles now. In the coming days of 2023, the OSMBD community event series will feature discussions & dialogues on engineering the transformation, financing the Sustainability & Goals, and using the outcomes to plan & execute our activity leaving no one behind. We as a community want to act as a lever of change by playing a key role in that articulation between levels, as a connector of actors and a catalyst for synergies. But to do this, we must understand that the models and methods of working that have helped us so far might not necessarily serve us to address the future. Lastly, we must strengthen our credibility, become more transparent, listen, and enter into dialogue with society & stakeholders, and review our organized practices and internal governance structures. We hope that you will be able to connect with us in the coming days and beyond. Let’s Do Less “Us” and More “Together.” Check out the “2022 Sketchbook from OpenStreetMap Bangladesh (OSMBD) Community <https://t.ly/O3KUx>” to get a flashback on the Year 2022 & a general outline of what’s coming up in the new year of 2023. Thanking You, On behalf of the Community, Tasauf A Baki Billah (Ribin)
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