UN Mappers stories: a new passionate cartographer in Ghana

Charles Donkor is one of the trainees who actively participated in our recent "OSM and Humanitarian Mapping" training. During the evaluation of the homework required by the training, we discovered that Charles was doing a lot of mapping in his hometown and asked him to share his experience.

“My name is Charles Donkor, Donkor in OSM, I am a Level 200 geography student at the University of Education, Winneba Ghana and also a member of the newly established UEW YouthMappers Chapter. I started the UN Mappers OSM training as a layman but after the training, my mapping skills improved. I have started mapping Twifo Praso, the district capital of Twifo Atti-Morkwa in the central region of Ghana. 

Along the training our facilitator showed how he could fully and nicely map neighborhoods in Salvador da Bahia, his hometown, in Brazil. I was impressed and began questioning myself, can I map Twifo Praso as Salvador has been mapped? Later on, I realized that Salvador has a well-defined urban tissue unlike Twifo Praso but anyway I could map my city since I know it very well.  

Mostly my mapping work with JOSM happens at night because the bundle is less expensive and internet connection is strong at that time. I download the area to be mapped and then start writing the names of schools, shops, offices, places, streets, and others that I know and can identify and locate on the satellite imagery. After that, the mapping starts. 

For the features I am not certain about, ground-truthing comes in knowing the absolute position of the features on the satellite image and the ground that is knowing where the feature is situated. Normally, I take note of features with my eye whenever I am out immediately after I arrive home, I pen them down. Observation is one of my key skills since I am interested in and passionate about spatial data and information, especially GIS.  

Kudos to UN Mappers, the OSM basics training has improved my mapping skills and spatial thinking. I am happy to contribute to OpenStreetMap and be a member of this community.”