The project originated with a winning entry to the Gates Foundation Grand Challenge contest on data interoperability, in early 2014. Map Kibera Trust, GroundTruth Initiative and Development Gateway applied together, with support from other members of Feedback Labs on the proposal.
Development Gateway is the technical developer of the website portal and administrative lead.
GroundTruth works on overall project management, organizing the Map Kibera team and providing guidance on the technical process of mapping, data linking, cartography, photo uploads.
Map Kibera Trust implements the project, including all work in the community and in Kenya, as well as the data editing in OpenStreetMap.org.
Feedback Labs is a group of organizations working on increasing citizen feedback - meaning effective information loops between citizens and government and NGOs. GroundTruth Initiative and Development Gateway are members.
People can collect information themselves about their communities, and share it openly online. This is a new way of collecting and sharing information, which relies not on formal surveys but on people's local knowledge. Citizen data is public data - shared openly.
Making citizen data, official data, and any other data source about a school easy to combine and compare, to get the best picture of what is happening in education at the moment.
Enabling parents to give feedback on their children's school, helping to show which schools are performing well, even in the absence of other data like test scores, and helping schools to improve.
Schools themselves can take ownership of their page, submit changes, and share their page to promote their work.
By focusing on little-known details of informal schools, it is possible to start a more informed conversation about how to improve those schools and incorporate them better into the public education system.
Helping people to access information about schools - including parents - through a website, printed resources and maps, and integration to social media.