GSDI Announces Awards in Annual Small Grants Program

In the third year of its Small Grants Program, the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) Association announces grants of $30,000 plus $13,500 in consulting services to fifteen organizations around the globe. This year the cash grants were enhanced with the addition of consulting from GISCorps with an equivalent value of up to $2,500 per project which allowed for both a larger number of grants and an increase in the value of grants.

The grants are aimed at assisting member organizations in building key components of their countries' emerging Spatial Data Infrastructures and are awarded to SDI coordinating bodies (councils, committees) and GIS user groups. Priority was given to projects in developing nations and countries with economies in transition. A GSDI Association team, including a representative of GISCorps, reviewed the 71 proposals and selected fifteen for grants.

Three grantees received $2,500 in funding from GSDI supplemented with voluntary services from the GIS Corps:
Institute for Ecology & Botany (Hungary) - Botany Portal
World Food Program (Mali) - SDI Application
Marshall Islands (Marshall Islands) - Metadata/clearinghouse

Nine grantees received $2,500 in funding from GSDI:
Columbia - Web Mapping Workshop
Observatoire Satellital des Forêts d'Afrique Centrale (Congo) - Biodiversity Database
Directorate of Land and Property (East Timor) - SDI Workshop
Foodlink (Kenya) - Workshop on Data Inventory and Agreement
Ministry of Lands & Environment (Jamaica) - continuation of existing work
Livestock (Kenya) - Data Inventory & Clearinghouse Development
Delta (Niger) - On-line Database and Clearinghouse
Information Management (Philippines) - Building NSDI, Technology Working Groups; Policies, and Database
Management of Health Services (Uganda) - SDI Workshop

Three Grantees received voluntary services from the GIS Corps:
Biodiversity (Namibia) - Biodiversity Database
Armenia - Web-mapping Volcanoes
Kenya - Coastal Resources Maps / Oil Spills

The GSDI Association supports the work of organizations in developing their own SDI initiatives nationally and regionally, and collaborates with local, national, and international organizations to ensure that geospatial data, services, and metadata are accessible through interoperable standards-based services, systems, software, and products that operate in a web-enabled environment. The success of the GSDI Association depends on the quality of its partnerships with public, private, academic, and non-governmental organizations.
For more information visit http://www.gsdi.org.

GISCorps is an international initiative that offers GIS consulting and development services by qualified volunteers to civil society organizations.
For more information visit http://www.giscorps.org

For information about this announcement, contact:

Alan Stevens
astevens@gsdi.org

Source: news@gsdi.org 

Jorge Brenner