On July 20th, Percent Pledge hosted another successful public virtual volunteer event—making our internal volunteer events available to our community while making workplace philanthropy easy, so everyone can make an impact alongside us.
Together, we mapped communities in Multan, Southern Punjab, Pakistan, home to 1.872 million people, and identified to have a high risk of flooding and earthquake liquefaction. During the Virtual Map-a-Thon for Humanitarian Aid, Percent Pledge employees and its community mapped 1,280 buildings in partnership with Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT). The now-mapped buildings help humanitarian aid organizations prepare for disaster and climate change resiliency planning.
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Accurate maps play a critical role in understanding communities, particularly for populations at risk, like Pakistan. These individuals are often less visible to decision-makers because their communities do not exist on any maps. During disasters or epidemics, unmapped communities may receive less assistance because first responders have less information about them.
During the event, volunteers were provided an overview of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and taught how to read open-source maps from satellite images. Then Percent Pledge and its community volunteers worked together to map buildings in Southern Punjab, Pakistan. Humanitarian organizations now have access to the mapped information so they can plan risk reduction and disaster response activities to save lives.
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