African NGOs are now on the map!

During a recent visit to Africa, the Google Earth Outreach team announced the availability of the Google Earth Outreach program in most African countries.

Now, organizations in Africa have new tools to help them use Google Maps and Google Earth to bring awareness to causes in a more visually appealing and impactful way.

For instance, if your organization is focused on providing humanitarian support to various regions around the world, with many projects taking place all the time, Google Earth can help you showcase all of these projects in a Google Earth Layer and give users the ability to get more information on the individual projects themselves while keeping a holistic view of all the projects your organization has underway.

The Surui Tribe of the Amazon Rainforest has recently partnered with the Jane Goodall Institute to create a Google Earth tour which flies viewers on a virtual tour through the Gombe Chimpanzee Reserve and the Surui Indigenous territory to show what indigenous people are doing to preserve their rainforest and prepare to enter the global carbon marketplace.

Organizations can use Google Maps and Google Maps API to plot their organizations' unique offerings, programs, impacts, constituencies and news in an easily accessible way and then embed these custom maps within a website. Watch brief video tutorials here.

World Justice Map uses Google Maps to showcase information about global rule-of-law promoters and makes it easy for users to identify organizations by name, status, activities and discipline. United for Africa uses Google Maps to document and track persecution and other assaults throughout South Africa. Users can submit incidents and customize their view with various filters. Many organizations are also using Ushahidi, an open source platform using Google Maps API, to allow anyone to submit information from webforms, emails and texts to a visual map representation.

There are an enormous variety of ways to customize Google Earth & Maps to benefit your organization. Google Earth and Maps are open to organizations in Africa and elsewhere around the world and you're encouraged to apply for a software grant of Google Earth Pro today! Visit the Google Earth Outreach site to find out more.

Posted by Jessica Vaughan, Google Grants Team