How Did Ebola Volunteers Know Where To Go In Liberia? Crowdsourcing!

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO  by Poncie Rutsch                                                      March 25, 2015
From more than 900 miles away, Kpetermeni Siakor helped get volunteers to the right neighborhoods in his native Liberia during the height of the Ebola epidemic.

Kpetermeni Siakor (left), a Liberian who is studying in Ghana, used crowdsourcing software to help out during the Ebola epidemic. Courtesy of Ashesi University College

He did it with Ushahidi, crowdsourcing software that was developed in Kenya in 2008, when the country experienced a wave of post-election violence. The word Ushahidi means testimony in Swahili.

"The government had shut down internet connections and radio stations, so Ushahidi was born out of the need to let people know what is happening," says Siakor, 26. He's a computer science student at Ashesi University College in Accra, Ghana, and receives financial support from the MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program.

In its infancy, citizen journalists would map violent incidents and peace efforts on Ushahidi. Siakor worked with a team that used the software following similarly contentious elections in Liberia in 2011. Afterward, his colleagues continued to run a technology hub in Monrovia called iLab Liberia to develop technology knowledge. When Ebola broke out, they already had a perfect tool to share data and aid emergency responders in real time.

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http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2015/03/25/394266190/how-did-ebola-volunteers-know-where-to-go-in-liberia-crowdsourcing