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When Hurricane Maria
hit Puerto Rico in 2017,
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we all watched as a disaster
played out on our screens.
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At least 160,000 people were displaced,
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and nearly 3,000 people died.
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Electricity was cut off
to the entire island,
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and some neighborhoods
didn't get power back for 11 months.
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Many of those watching
didn't know how to help.
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Some donated to international NGOs.
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Some lobbied their elected officials.
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But as with so many crises,
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so many of us simply gave in
and felt helpless.
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At the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap team,
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also known as HOT,
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we did something different.
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We mobilized 6,000 volunteers
across the world
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who mapped every home
and every road in Puerto Rico.
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And here you can see the maps
those volunteers made taking shape.
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Responders then used those maps
to assess the state of buildings and roads
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and to provide emergency funds,
WiFi and phone-charging points
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to people whose homes were damaged.
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All crises,
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including the COVID-19 pandemic
we're living through right now,
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have devastating characteristics.
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But many of them have one thing in common:
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the people hit the hardest are often
literally not on the map.
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Right now, more than one billion people
live in places that are not mapped.
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If you look those places up online,
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you'll see nothing but a blank.
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And that blank isn't just
a huge statement of disrespect
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to our fellow human beings,
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it's an injustice,
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causing very direct, very real
and very avoidable human suffering.
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So what does not being
on the digital map actually look like?
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I live in Peru, and a few months ago,
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some community health workers
asked us to help them map.
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Obviously, where they were wasn't mapped,
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so to get there, we asked
a local mayor to draw the route.
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This is what he drew.
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This piece of paper
was hard to follow. (Laughs)
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We didn't really know
what these lines were.
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He put some numbers on there
that he assured us were travel times,
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but as we were driving along,
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these did not correspond to our reality.
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But this isn't about me getting lost
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or about shaming
someone's bad drawing skills.
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Think how inefficient it is
to manage a team
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who need to work in this place
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without a map to tell them
where they need to go.
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Then, once they're in the right village,
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how can they collect some data
and associate it to that place?
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Those community health workers
know that needs in this region are high,
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particularly anemia
and malnutrition among children.
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They just don't know
where those children are,
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or what is causing that problem.
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They want to be able to locate
the home of every child under five,
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but how can they do that without a map?
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After a brief training,
we went out to make a map,
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and this is what those community
health workers produced.
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This map has everything
you need to navigate,
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like the rivers and bridges,
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but it also has every local landmark,
the school, the football pitch, the plaza.
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And I'm pleased to say
that a few weeks ago,
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we got a call from
those community health workers,
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and they're using this map
in their response containing COVID-19.
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So you might be thinking:
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Why aren't these places
on commercial maps?
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In short, mapping the most
vulnerable places in our world
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just hasn't been a priority
for for-profit companies,
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whose business models typically rely
on advertising and data sales.
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This leaves out the poorest communities
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and means that individual
aid organizations create maps
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for the small areas
that they're working in
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in offline systems which rapidly
become out-of-date when a project ends.
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So what we have here
is a lack of easily shareable
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and easily updatable data.
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But we also have a solution.
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We map with a tool
called OpenStreetMap,
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which was founded in 2006
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and is a free, open-source tool
which anyone can use to map the world.
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Just as anyone can read or edit
an article on Wikipedia,
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anyone can use or edit
the map in OpenStreetMap,
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and the resulting map is public good,
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free and open for anyone to use,
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creating one map for all of us.
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It works in two phases.
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Buildings and roads might not
be on the map yet,
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but you can see them clearly
in satellite imagery.
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Volunteers working anywhere in the world
turn satellite images into maps
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through drawing the buildings and roads
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on top of them.
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We call this a base map.
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On average, each time a volunteer logs in,
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they map an area less than
10 kilometers squared,
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but add all those contributions together,
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and you can map entire cities
in just a couple of days.
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And second, local mapping.
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People living and working
in the places we're mapping
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take that base map and color it in,
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for example, identifying:
Is this building a school or a hospital?
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Those people add information
you can't see in a satellite image.
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We found people able and eager to map
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in even the most challenging
situations worldwide,
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and we've optimized the tools
to work on smartphones
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costing as little as 30 dollars.
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Additionally, the tools work offline,
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so people without regular access
to cell service can still contribute,
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adding things to the map
as they go about their daily lives,
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and then uploading when they get access
to cell service or WiFi.
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In 10 years, we've seen people
from all walks of life take part.
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Refugees have mapped broken water points.
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Rural women have added place names
in Indigenous languages.
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And, in doing so, people become
active agents of change
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in their communities.
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Since 2010, HOT has engaged
over 200,000 volunteers
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who have mapped an area
home to more than 150 million people
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in OpenStreetMap.
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Those maps have been used
by search and rescue operations
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to free hundreds of people
trapped in collapsed buildings
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after the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
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They've been used to provide
polio vaccinations to children
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across all of rural Nigeria.
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And they've mapped the camps,
routes and new homes
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of more than eight million refugees
fleeing South Sudan, Syria and Venezuela.
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We work with the biggest
humanitarian organizations in the world
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to make sure these maps have impact --
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the Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières,
UNICEF to name a few --
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and we currently have a queue
of more than 2,000 places
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needing to be mapped.
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So that's the story so far.
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But wouldn't it be great
if these places were on the map
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before they were in crisis?
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Now we're ready for a step change.
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Over the past few years,
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we've gained access to global,
regularly updated satellite imagery.
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Machine learning and AI
are helping human mappers
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to work more efficiently.
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And worldwide, more and more people
are willing and able
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to map their communities.
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Over the next five years,
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we'll engage one million volunteers
who will map an area
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home to the one billion
most vulnerable people
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across 94 countries.
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To achieve this,
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we need to do three things.
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First, we need to grow our community
to one million mappers,
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who will build a world
where everyone everywhere is represented.
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We'll set up a network of regional hubs
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to train and support those volunteers
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to map the vulnerable places
in their own countries.
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Second, we need to invest in technology.
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Right now, you can add something
like a building or a local landmark
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to the map in just a few seconds,
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but learning to map
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and mapping easily
and quickly on a mobile
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can be a problem.
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We need to invest in technologies
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to make mobile edits to the map
possible at a massive scale.
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And third, we need to raise awareness.
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Aid projects across the world need to know
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that these maps are free
and available for them to use
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and that they can request maps
for the areas that they're working in.
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For me, this is one of the most
wonderful things about this project.
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It isn't really about HOT
or any single organization.
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It's about creating a foundation
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on which so many
organizations will thrive.
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Whatever we do,
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disasters and crises will still happen,
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and humanitarians
will still respond to them.
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Development programs will continue,
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but without maps,
they'll lack critical information
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about what to expect in the community
before they get there.
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With open, free, up-to-date maps,
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those programs will have more impact
than they would do otherwise,
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leading to a meaningful difference
in lives saved or improved.
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But it's so much more than that.
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It's 2020, and one billion people
in our world are not visible.
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That's wrong.
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This is a tool through which
every citizen of Planet Earth
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can become known and seen,
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to literally be put on the map.
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My peers complain about being
too overconnected,
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so how can it be possible
for more than a billion people
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to remain invisible?
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Luckily, this is a problem
even the laziest among us
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can help to solve.
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If you can swipe left or right,
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you can help.
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Map this morning
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and influence life-changing
decisions this afternoon.
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Frontline health workers and humanitarians
are literally waiting for you.
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Thank you.
Natalia Karlina
Hello Erin,
Can you please check second 31 where it mentions the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team for the first time? The 'Team' is written with a lower-case 't'. I believe it should be an upper-case 'T'.
I don't know whether it matters or not and whether anyone has already mentioned it.
Thank you
Natalia
Camille Martínez
The English transcript was updated 11/11/20. Please note the following change:
0:31 - 0:33
team ----> Team
Thank you, Natalia!