When we launched our Geo Challenge Grants project last fall, we hoped our small grants program would provide nonprofits with the impetus and resources they need to take advantage of powerful online mapping tools like Google Earth and Google Maps. We were, without a doubt, not disappointed. In fact, we were overwhelmed by the hundreds of exciting and innovative geospatial applications that poured in from around the world, addressing diverse issues from renewable energy resources to education.
We are excited to announce that we have awarded grants to fourteen organizations with creative geo applications. These projects address important problems through creative and scalable geospatial applications. Grants are awarded either through the Google.org Fund at Tides Foundation or directly from Google.org.
Over the next six months to one year, these Geo Challenge Grant recipients will launch their projects and open-source all of the data, making both the projects and the data accessible to people all over the world. We hope these projects will inspire others to use geospatial platforms to address global problems:
| Grantee | Project Name | Project Description | Amount |
| Academy for Educational Development | Data Visualization for Global Education | Using the Education Policy & Data Center's existing data system, AED will develop new visual tools for better communication of education patterns, inequality, and trends to policy makers and program developers | $21,600 |
| Appalshop, Inc. | Wise Energy Forums | Mapping the renewable energy resources in Wise County Virginia to show the opportunity of a sustainable energy future locally | $5,000 |
| Asha for Education | Interactive geospatial web-based portal for dissemination of information related to the education of underprivileged children in India | Developing an interactive geospatial web based portal for dissemination of information related to the education of underprivileged children in India | $6,000 |
| CartONG | REDD Pilot – Elaboration and displaying of forest gains and losses in two target communities in Vietnam | Designing a pilot system for monitoring deforestation rates for Central Highlands of Vietnam. The project will carry out forest inventories and calculate carbon stocks using models | $25,000 |
| e-Geopolis | e-Geopolis Data Dissemination Project: Urban Growth in Africa and India, 1950-2020 | Enhancing the quality and quantity of urbanization data for communities of 10,000 people in India and Africa | $50,000 |
| Esperanza del Barrio | Street Vendor Mobile Mapping | Developing a mapping application and website that will accept multi-user texts to map and update street vendor locations, integrating data into websites like Yelp and Urbanspoon, and providing information about access to healthy foods to the community | $21,600 |
| Green Belt Movement | The Green Belt Movement Tree Planting Project Mapping in Kenya | Creating a web-based system to visualize and monitor the Green Belt Movement supported community tree nurseries and associated tree planting sites in Kenya | $50,000 |
| International Snow Leopard Trust | Climate Change Impacts on Snow Leopard Range: Prioritizing Conservation Efforts to Mitigate Human-Wildlife Conflict | Displaying different climate change scenarios in regions of China where the snow leopard lives to prevent human-snow leopard conflict | $5,000 |
| King's College London | Mapping the potential of global hydropower to sustain renewable energy demands, the risks imposed by climate change and strategies for adaptation through land cover management | Mapping the global distribution of dams, contributing watersheds and the role of protected areas and community reserves in providing water-based environmental services to these dams | $25,000 |
| Marine Conservation Biology Institute | Renewable Energy at Sea: Best Places for Wind, Wave & Current Generation in US Waters | Creating a map of offshore wind, wave and current renewable resources as well as shipping lanes, marine sanctuaries, and aquaculture that will highlight the most favorable areas for development | $5,000 |
| Point Reyes Bird Observatory | Biodiversity Futures: Mapping Biological Responses to Climate Change | Building a dynamic and user-driven online modeling application using existing avian, climate, vegetation, and land use change data to show deviation of avian migration based on climate change scenarios | $25,000 |
| Royal University of Phnom Penh | Mapping Healthcare Centres in Cambodia | Mapping the health centers in the country's capital city (clinics, services, contact info, languages, etc) and using this as the foundation for a Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) emergency system | $5,000 |
| Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society | To develop a dynamic Geo Portal interfaced with Google Earth and climate change data to provide a “one stop shop” Internet database for Asian elephant conservation and to identify individual elephants through an automated identification program | Developing a dynamic Geo Portal with climate change data to provide a “one stop shop” Internet database for Asian elephant conservation and to identify individual elephants through an automated identification program | $15,000 |
| UK Consortium on AIDS & International Development | Mapping availability of HIV, AIDS and TB services in Africa | Using the Ushahidi platform, it will map organizations providing HIV, AIDS and TB related services in Kenya and create a tool that enables organizations without experience of mapping to publish data on HIV, AIDS and TB services in their own countries | $40,800 |
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