WHO recently declared the novel coronavirus, dubbed COVID-19 a global pandemic. It is wreaking havoc globally, threatening to bring the world to a standstill. Lockdowns have become the order of the day in cities and countries world wide. In the wake of this pandemic, Governments and humanitarian response organisations are putting in every effort to respond to this crisis. Local communities are also self organising to support groups that have been hardest hit and are most vulnerable to the effects of coronavirus. In the wake of this pandemic, are you looking for help deploying the Ushahidi platform? Or are you looking to find ways to support existing efforts to respond to this crisis? Please get in touch with us and we will work together to help you get started.

Watch this crowdsourcing data module from The Governance Lab's Collective Crisis Intelligence Course by Ushahidi co-founder, Juliana Rotich and Executive Director, Angela Oduor Lungati

Useful links:

- Start your own deployment

- How to run a successful deployment

- User-support

- Contact us

What you can do to help

Ushahidi's focused on ensuring equal access to resources ( tech, information, and skills) to help people solve problems in their communities. We've built an open source tool for the benefit of a large global community improving the world for themselves and others, holding governments accountable, and raising their voices to be more powerful together. Ushahidi has been used for 12 years whenever there’s a crisis or disaster, but with a worldwide pandemic, there is a surge in need for support globally. Today, we are reaching out to ask for your help to make Ushahidi Platform better and amplify the work of others.


If you have skills or resources that you want to put to work in favor of those who depend on our tools, and some free time (which we fully acknowledge is a privilege not everyone has) this is an unprecedented opportunity to do so.


Some specific areas where we need help


1. Improve our tech: Head over to our COVID19-page for specific for developers to learn more.


2. Create awareness: Write a blog post about your experience using Ushahidi Platform V3+ and what you learned from it, then share it with us so we can amplify and help others who are setting up their first Ushahidi Platform deployment.


3. Donate to Ushahidi: We have 11 people on staff who are working round the clock to provide support to users responding to this crisis. Your support allow us to increase our capacity and make sure we can maintain our operational ability to help others throughout this long-term crisis.

How to get started

- Developer documentation

- Chat with us on Gitter

Social media

- Facebook

- Twitter

- Instagram

Donate to help us do this work

Deployments related to COVID-19

Blog feed

Smbanner Post Final

Help us support communities using Ushahidi to enact social change.

By Angela Oduor Lungati,

Today, on Giving Tuesday, we’re launching a new way to support Ushahidi’s work that is directly tied to the impact our deployers create on the ground. We’ve partnered with Momentum, to create a new donation page: https://give.ushahidi.com, which enables our supporters to donate on a recurring basis. You can now tie your donations to the number of reports collected and published on Ushahidi maps.

Read Post
Ushahidi Platform bug fix release + Mapbox Support!
Screenshot 2020 05 18 At 12 43 14

Growth Beyond Expectation - Insights from Frena La Curva

By June Mwangi,

As the world continues grappling with the effects of covid 19, several months later we can begin to take stock of how various initiatives set up through the Ushahidi platform have performed in terms of reach and outcomes. Frena La Curva provides an excellent case study for such a review

Read Post
Screenshot 2020 04 14 At 11 19 48

Surveying the social and economic effects of COVID-19 in Africa

By June Mwangi,

Africa desperately needs good and accurate data to help deal with the effects of COVID-19. This project is gathering information to help support business and community during the novel Coronavirus crisis. It is provided and Powered by Liquid Telecom to support Kenya Private Sector Alliance and other partners using the Ushahidi platform.

Read Post
Gov Lab Crisis Module

Things to consider when setting up a COVID-19 crowdsourcing project

By Angela Oduor Lungati,

A few weeks ago, Ushahidi Co-founder, Juliana Rotich and Executive Director, Angela Lungati co-created a module on crowdsourcing data, that is part of a larger effort by The Governance Lab (The GovLab) at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering’s massive open online course on “Collective Crisis Intelligence”, to help institutions improve disaster response through the use of data and volunteer participation.

Here’s some of the questions you need to consider as you plan your crowdsourced response to COVID-19.

Read Post
covid nigeria

Supporting COVID-19 response efforts in Nigeria

By Angela Oduor Lungati,

The team of three evaluators at the Cloneshouse Nigeria’s Center for Learning, Evaluation and Monitoring (CLEAM) and three data nerds, at Dataphyte, have decided to aggregate information about the COVID-19. This time on a Ushahidi map called the COVID19 Nigeria Map.The idea around this is to document information about COVID-19 in Nigeria from verified news sources and channels, assess the extent to which fake news is peddled during this time and provide real-time information about people that need help to use the Ushahidi platform.

Read Post
Screenshot 2020 03 28 At 11 33 09

Ushahidi in the era of COVID 19

By Angela Oduor Lungati,

In the last week alone, there have been more than 200 covid related maps created on our hosted service, and many other self hosted ones. They’re collecting information, organizing their communities, and making sure that those who need supplies, food, or help are connected to those who can give it. And this number is growing daily.

These deployments are being run by non-Ushahidi staff, using our platform. This is important, we’re a small team of 11 full-time staff, which means we have a binary choice to make: dig into a single deployment of the software (as we’ve done with elections in Kenya and the locusts invasion) or support many at a global level. We’ve chosen the latter: to effectively serve everyone who needs our support.

Read Post
Screenshot 2020 03 20 At 16 34 24

ANPAS: Supporting vulnerable communities in Italy during Covid-19 lockdowns

By June Mwangi,

Local communities are also self organising to support groups that have been hardest hit and are most vulnerable to the effects of coronavirus.

One such group is Anpas, the Italian Associations of Public Assistance. This non profit organisation that comprises several volunteering organisations in the Italian region, have deployed the Ushahidi platform to ensure a steady supply of food, medicine and other subsistence goods for citizens who are unable to provide for themselves in this period of isolation in Italy.

Read Post
Anpas

Waiving Ushahidi Basic Plan fees to support COVID-19 response

By Angela Oduor Lungati,

In response to the growing need for platforms like ours to surface additional information and support coordination efforts, we want to do our part in making Ushahidi accessible to those who need it.

As a result, for the next 90 days, starting March 18th 2020, we will be waiving full fees for the Ushahidi basic plan, allowing all users to access the full feature set of the platform

Read Post