Funded under the Swiss Block Grant, Mapping for Change in collaboration with the Centre for Training and Personal Development MERITUM, the Cultural Authority City of Gardens and Highways 4 Elements carried out a two year training programme in the Silesia region of Poland.
The project set out to increase the participation of citizens in shaping local policy created in the Silesian-Cracow Europol.
Our Role
Mapping for Change were commissioned to train forty-two trainers and coaches in sustainable development of the area outlined in the Development Strategy for the South Polish region. Mapping for Change equipped trainers with the ability to not only train others, but also to run engaging workshops across the community.
Impact
Mapping for Change developed a Polish version of their interactive Community Maps platform and trained participants enrolled in the programme in how to utilise a range of participatory mapping methodologies. The information collected during the mapping process formed the basis for developing written recommendations to take concrete actions for change in local communities and that aim to enable people to feed into local plans for sustainable development.
Community Maps allowed citizens to take action about problems which affected them in their local area, including dog fowling.
Related Projects
D-NOSES - Tackling Odour Pollution Across Europe
D-NOSES is a three-year EU funded research project which aims to provide a solution to the largely neglected issue of odour pollution, changing the traditional top-down approach for a bottom-up one. The lack of regulation from authorities around odour pollution is mainly due to it being difficult to reliably measure and the potential solutions being costly to implement.
Breathe Clean - Citizen Science in Tower Hamlets
Breathe Clean will be providing Tower Hamlets residents with the materials & training needed to monitor nitrogen dioxide levels around the places that matter to them. Participants will measure the air quality at a number of locations over a period of six months, to get a more granular picture of the situation in the borough. The data from the Breathe Clean project will be made available on Mapping for Change’s community maps webpage.
How to Spend a Million? Northfleet Big Local Trust
In 2012, the Big Lottery Fund in England invested £1 million in 150 neighbourhoods for its Big Local initiative. Northfleet, Kent, was one of the first 50 to be selected. The grant aimed to equip local communities with skills and tools to identify key areas and issues where action was reqiored in their area.