Ushahidi and Local Voice For Kenya

I met Erik Hersman at an AD2 Event a few months back when he has a presenter on New Media and Blogging. Being the only other real blogger in the audience we connected and laughed as a room full of journalists were missing the point. We have loosely stayed in touch since and I have been hearing a lot of noise coming from his Tweets about the situation happening live in Kenya.

Here's a cliff note version of his bio from his website White African:

Contrary to popular belief, I am not from South Africa. My name is Erik Hersman and grew up in Kenya and Sudan. I’m one of those guys who’s much more “at home” in Africa, though I currently reside in the US. On WhiteAfrican.com, I like to write about technology and give my thoughts on how it is impacting, and can change, Africa.

Over the weekend Erik and a few friends whipped up a great little site called Ushahidi which is a map that focuses on the violence happening in Kenya.



From his latest blog post, Erik writes:

Ushahidi.com is a tool for people who witness acts of violence in Kenya in these post-election times. You can report the incident that you have seen, and it will appear on a map-based view for others to see. Ory and Daudi are working with local Kenyan NGO’s to get information and to verify each incident.

Please visit Ushahidi and keep up to date with the happenings in Kenya and please pray for peace in the region. Hopefully a real resolution is forthcoming. While I do not claim to be an expert on the subject, please feel free to send any questions my way to grollett@tmail.com and I will find the resources to answer your questions as they come in.

Related posts from Rock For Hunger:
Save Kenya
Urgent call for Non-Violence and Democracy in Kenya

-g-ro