The roots of Global MapAid go back to mapping small business support in Kosovo in 1999 by a local team, which benefitted development agencies working on job creation, so vital to peace-building.
However, it was conceived in 2003 at the end of Rupert Douglas-Bate’s fellowship at Stanford University, sponsored by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, when his team of students & faculty won a prize at the Business Association of Stanford Engineering Students summer competition. Out of a field of some 30 contenders, the project came in the top three and won $5,000.
The fellowship team, which consisted of 23 students and some faculty, then decided to start a social enterprise not-for-profit. Everyone was asked to suggest names and a blind ranking was made. Out popped the name “Global MapAid“. While we knew we wanted to “map poverty solutions” we have been slowly evolving our ideas ever since.
In 2011, after the Arab Spring, we decided our hot focus must be to map solutions that underpin sustainable job creation, with a youth focus as over 620 million youth are not in employment education or training. This is so that policymakers, development donors and aid organisations could benefit from the knowledge and spend finite resources better. We must also take into account how climate change and population growth can be mitigated, for example by jobs that distract youth from de-forestation and living off wildlife, with jobs that are more drought-proof, more resilient to climate shocks, and respectful of carbon.
Scroll down to look through our history of projects and see what we’ve achieved over the years.