On Saturday 7th March 2020, the tenth Open Data Day took place with people around the world organising over 300 events to celebrate, promote and spread the use of open data. Thanks to generous support from key funders, the Open Knowledge Foundation was able to support the running of more than 60 of these events via our mini-grants scheme.
This blogpost is a report by Mikko Tamura from MapBeks in the Philippines who received funding from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to organise a mapping party to highlight HIV facilities and LGBT-friendly spaces on OpenStreetMap.
The first Open Data Day celebration of Pilipinas Chubs X Chasers (PCC) was done at the Fahrenheit Club on 7th March 2020. The event started at 9pm and 16 participants joined the datathon to improve on the largest open HIV database in the country.
PCC, the largest online community of LGBTQIA+ chubs, chasers and bears in the Philippines has dedicated its celebration of Open Data Day to teach fellow community (bear, chubs, chasers, supporters) members the importance of emancipating the data and making it more accessible to everyone who needs it.
Mr Papu Torres, chairperson of PCC, and Mr Mikko Tamura, lead advocate of MapBeks, spearheaded the event as they believe that as members of their growing community can make a bigger impact by encouraging people to contribute by simply researching and validating information.
Currently, MapBeks with the full support of PCC, has been developing maps and databases highlighting and representing the LGBTQ community. You may contribute to their working HIV database and maps here:
HIV Facilities Email/Website working database https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jdlDJw3eue0e6YK9mKgYfaTw5962e2H1g_tWZQscbcE/ edit?usp=sharing
HIV Facilities map http://tinyurl.com/mapbekshivmap
PCC’s objective of the ODD event was to collect/complete as much information on websites and email addresses of all HIV facilities in the country and contribute the information on OpenStreetMap for everyone to access.
Figure 1 Papu Torres, chairperson of Pilipinas Chubs X Chasers, teaching how to contribute and research on websites and emails for the open database of HIV Facilities.
According to MapBeks, there are a total of 659 identified HIV facilities in the country, but the data varies from one organisation to another. It is part of the group’s advocacy to make such information more accessible, downloadable, and useable to the crowd specially for people living with HIV (PLHIV).
The SlumBEAR Datathon was able to contribute 250 email addresses and 383 websites to the database. This constitutes more than 20% of the needed information that will be added on geotagged locations of clinics, hospitals, and health centres in the country.
Lastly, Mr Leonard Kodie Macayan III, Mr. Fahrenheit 2020 and our country’s representative to the Mr Gay World competition, visited the crowd and showed support for our open data movement. Mr Fahrenheit is an annual male pageant, exclusive only for gay men and bisexuals. It is the first and the longest running of its kind, having been set up in 2003. Its mission is to support the advocacy towards mental health and tackling various issues like clinical depression, suicidal tendencies and the stigma of HIV/AIDS.
We would like to specially thank the Open Knowledge Foundation for the support and trust for our small community, and to Papu Torres, John Mojica, Ryan Sotto for making things possible.
The Pilipinas Chubs X Chasers community will continue to support activities such as this in the future as it deems it necessary and empowering for smaller communities to be part of something bigger. See you next Open Data Day!
For more information and partnerships, contact Mikko Tamura at mikko.tamura@gmail.com.
